Missouri Compromise.

The issue of the expansion of slavery reared its head even as the Panic of 1819 put a damper on postwar nationalism and patriotism. By 1820 Missouri had a population of about sixty thousand, including ten thousand slaves, making it the first territory within the Louisiana Purchase with enough people to become a state. Before that could happen, Congress had to pass an enabling act to allow Missouri to create a state constitution and then must approve the resulting document. Representative James Tallmadge of New York offered two amendments to Missouri's enabling act that would have barred more slaves from entering the state and emancipated those already there as they reached the age of twenty-five. Without such legislation Missouri was poised to enter the Union as a slave state, bringing more slave-state senators and representatives into the United States Congress. In...