ry numerous they petitioned Congress in 1818 for
leave to make the state of Missouri and to be admitted into the Union.

The petitioners did not say whether they would make a slave or a free
state; but as the Missourians owned slaves, everybody knew that Missouri
would be a slave state. To this the free states were opposed. If the
tobacco-growing, cotton-raising, and sugar-making states wanted slaves,
that was their affair; but slavery must not be extended into states
beyond the Mississippi, because it was wrong. No man, it was said, had
any right to buy and sell a human being, even if he was black. The
Southern people were equally determined that slavery should cross the
Mississippi. We cannot, said they, abolish slavery; because if our
slaves were set free, they would not work, and as they are very
ignorant, they would take our property and perhaps our lives. Neither
can we stop the increase of negro slave population. We must, then, have
some place to send our surplus slaves, or the present slave states will
become a black America.

%310. The Missouri Compromise.%--Each side was so determined, and it
was so clear that neither would yield, that a compromise was suggested.
The country east of the Mississippi, it was said, is partly slave,
partly free soil. Why not divide the country west of the great river in
the same way? At first the North refused. But it so happened that just
at this moment Maine, having secured the consent of Massachusetts,
applied to Congress for admission into the Union as a free state. The
South, which had control of the Senate, thereupon said to the North,
which controlled the House of Representatives, If you will not admit
Missouri as a slave state, we will not admit Maine as a free state. This
forced the compromise, and after a bitter and angry discussion it
was agreed

1. That Maine should come in as a free, and Missouri as a slave, state.

2. That the Louisiana Purchase should be cut in two by the parallel of
36 deg. 30', and that all north of the line except Missouri should be free
soil[1]. This parallel was thereafter known as the "Missouri
Compromise Line."

[Footnote 1: The Compromise was violated in 1836, when the present
northwest corner of Missouri was taken from the free territory and added
to that state. See maps, pp. 299 and 348]

[Illustration: AREAS OF FREEDOM AND SLAVERY IN 1820]

The admission of Maine and Missouri raised the number of states to
twenty-four.[1] No more