That this did not
mean a rigid adherence to the anti-slavery provision was shown by the
admission of Illinois in 1818 with an apprentice system, which made
slavery possible in that State for twenty-two years to come. A motion
to reject the application of Illinois on this ground was overwhelmingly
defeated. The States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama,
had been created out of the indefinite territory south of the Ohio
River in which Congress had pledged itself to make no law emancipating
slaves. No slavery conditions were placed upon their admission, which
was considered equivalent to an agreement that they were to be slave
States. Louisiana was created out of the Louisiana Purchase and Arkansas
made into a Territory with the same tacit permission, as has been said.
Precedent consequently taught everything and nothing so far as Missouri
was concerned.
The obligations of the Union toward a State were freely discussed;
whether "new states may be admitted by the Congress" meant "must" be
admitted. On a small scale the discussion rehearsed the Hayne-Webster
debate a decade later.
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