Who knows about the Missouri Compromise?

Ah, U.S. History. :) History is my best subject. I’m really good at this, so let me try to answer your question. :D

The Missouri Compromise was a document that was released about 40 years before the Civil War in the year 1820. This document was an agreement by Pro-slavery and Anti-slavery activists on how to settle the feud of future states as either being pro or anti slavery. During this time, Maine, a future state had also applied for statehood, thus increasing the tension between Missouri’s fate in slavery laws with the North and South.

In late 1820 however, Henry Clay, offered to the Congress that Maine be admitted into the Union as a free state and Missouri will be admitted into the Union as a slave state. This worked out because from then on, every state North of Missouri was to become free and every state below it was to be slave states. This of course, somewhat abolished the idea of popular sovereignty in which the residents themselves chose the outcome of the state’s view of slavery.

On an economic standpoint, the South gained from this agreement. As you probably learned in class, during the early and mid 1800’s, the Southern part of the United States depended heavily on slaves to produce crops and products, because of the lack of technology that the north had.

In 1850, the Compromise was edited to include a statement during the Mexican War that states any lands outside and north of the line dividing the north and south of the Missouri Compromise became a free state. In 1854 however, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 repealed the Missouri Compromise. This new act declared that the new-found lands of Kansas and Nebraska were at a conflict and so the residents shall determine the outcome.

Hope that answered it for you. :D