%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 were admitted for sixteen years.  When Missouri applied for admission as a state, Arkansas was (1819) organized as a territory.

[Footnote 1:  For the compromise read Woodburn’s Historical Significance of the Missouri Compromise (in Report American Historical Association, 1893, pp. 251-297); McMaster’s History of the People of the United States, Vol.  IV., Chap. 39.]

%311.  The Second Election of Monroe.%—­This bitter contest over the exclusion of slavery from the country west of the Mississippi shows how completely party lines had disappeared in 1820.  In the course of that year, electors of a President were to be chosen in the twenty-four states.  That slavery would play an important part in the campaign, and that some candidate would be put in the field by the people opposed to the compromise, might have been expected.  But there was no campaign, no contest, no formal nomination.  The members of Congress held a caucus, but decided to nominate nobody.  Every elector, it was well known, would be a Republican, and as such would vote for the reelection of Monroe and Tompkins.  And this almost did take place.  Every one of the 229 electors who voted was a Republican, and all save one in New Hampshire cast votes for Monroe.  But this one man gave his vote to John Quincy Adams.  He said he did not want Washington to be robbed of the glory of being the only President who had ever received the unanimous vote of the electors.

March 4, 1821, came on Sunday.  Monroe was therefore inaugurated on Monday, March 5.