A brief discussion of the Missouri Compromise of 1820 focusing both on the events leading up to the compromise and its political and social consequences.
Slavery had been a major issue in the United States since the Revolutionary War, with many Americans feeling that slavery was wrong and opposing it (abolitionists), but many others dependent on the slave system for their economic survival strongly supporting slavery. The issue of pro-slavery and anti-slavery also played out in America’s expansion westward in the early 1800s, as both sides tried to stake out the new western territories as their own.