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Missouri Compromise

The Missouri Compromise, also called the Compromise of 1820 was an agreement in the Senate of the United States March 2, 1820 that smoothed over, for a time, disagreements on the issue of slavery in the Union.

Expansion of Slavery
In 1793, Eli Whitney invented a machine to separate the seed from cotton fiber. The cotton gin allowed mechanized cotton spinning and lowered the price of the fiber. In Europe, the Napoleonic Wars soon ended with cotton consumption growing fast and English factories began to import cotton from the United States to cope with demand. Cotton replaced tobacco as the main source of wealth in the southern United States. But its picking required intensive labor. Thus, the rich southern planters increased their import of slaves from Africa. As the cotton depleted the soil quickly, growers sought new lands to the west. Thus three new southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama asked for and obtained the right to practice slavery. In 1818, under the presidency of James Monroe, a territory of the former French Louisiana, Missouri, where there were already slaves, was poised to become the 23rd state of the United States and in turn demand the right to practice slavery.

Compromise in the Senate
After prolonged debate in the House of Representatives and the Senate, a compromise was accepted on March 2, 1820 at the initiative of Henry Clay, Senator from Kentucky, who is known in history as the "Great Peacemaker". A new free state, Maine, was admitted to the Union to counterbalance the slave state of Missouri. Furthermore, it was agreed that future states will be free or slave depending upon their place north or south of the 36 ° 30 'parallel (the southern border of Missouri), not to be confused with the Mason-Dixon Line, located at latitude 39 ° 43 '20'' North and the boundary between Pennsylvania (free) and Maryland (slave). After a long legal battle, Congress decided that Missouri remain a slave state but can not introduce new slaves and that all children born after the admission of slave parents will be automatically freed at the age of 25 years. This compromise eased tensions, but it was to be repealed in 1854 with the Kansas-Nebraska Act and would be declared unconstitutional by the Dred Scott decision in 1857. The issue of slavery then lead to the Civil War.