This would make Missouri a free
State. Considering the triangular shape of the purchase, with the bulk
of land lying to the north of the proposed line, the division was
manifestly unequal. Roughly estimated, the proportions would be about
one to seven. That would mean in time fourteen Northern and two Southern
Senators. It would mean seven times the chances of population for
representation in the House. At last, Henry Clay, Speaker of the House,
who had favoured slavery in Missouri, was able to effect a compromise
whereby thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was accepted as the
dividing-line; but the State of Missouri, which lay to the north of
it, was made an exception and admitted without any restriction and,
consequently, open to slavery. In all the remainder of the vast tract
north of the line slavery was forbidden, as it had been in the Northwest
Territory.
This extension of the slavery-freedom line ran up the Mississippi from
the mouth of the Ohio, passed about the State of Missouri, returned
to her southern boundary, and ran thence to the summit of the Rocky
Mountains. There were now twelve free and twelve slave States in the
Union.
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