Missouri Compromise Research Paper

Words: 800
Pages: 4

In the Antebellum Period, slavery were a very controversial issue. To try and prevent this issue from becoming worse, slave states and free states were invented in the United States. A slave state was any southern state in the U.S. that slavery was legal in before the Civil War. Free states were any state in the United States where slavery was illegal. In 1820 the state of Missouri became a slave state and Maine became a free state. This event took place to make sure the amount of slave states and free states were equal and it soon became known as the Missouri Compromise. The balance of the slave and free states was very important to keep so that one part would not over turn the other, it was trying to prevent one part of the U.S. from having a bigger population and also from having more senators than the other. The Missouri Compromise was an important part of American history because it helped keep the Union together. The Union is the United States united under one single government. It was important to keep it together so that wars between the Northern and Southern parts of the United States of America would not randomly occur. Three major people involved in the Missouri Compromise were Henry Clay, James Monroe, and Rufus King.
Henry Clay played a very big role
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He was voted into the Massachusetts state legislature which then led up to him going to Philadelphia to represent Massachusetts in the Continental Congress. King also became a U.S. Senator in 1817. He has always been an anti-slavery activist. During the Missouri Compromise he made very powerful speeches against slavery. His most memorable speech was in 1819 against Missouri entering as a slave state. King’s reasons for speaking against slavery was to try and get the North against it. The goal was to revive that fortunes of the Federalist