Congress had stipulated on March 2, 1821,…

Congress had stipulated on March 2, 1821, that Missouri could not gain admission to the Union until it agreed that the exclusionary clause would never be interpreted in a way that would abridge the privileges and immunities of U.S. citizens.

Missouri so agrees and becomes the twenty-fourth state on August 10, 1821; Maine had been admitted the previous March 15.

The Missouri Compromise engineered by Henry Clay thus officially divides the United States into southern Slave States and northern Free States.

The Compromise temporarily quells the sectional debate on slavery, but leaves unanswered the moral question of slavery’s continued existence in a supposedly democratic society.