just as it was becoming more popular in the South. By the turn of the century, seven of the most Northern states had abolished slavery. During this time, a surge of democratic reform swept the North to the West, and there were demands for political equality, economic and social advances for all Americans. Northerners said that slavery revoked the human right of being a free person and when new territories became available in the West, the southern states wanted to expand and use slavery in the newly acquired territories. The North opposed this and wanted to stop the expansion of slavery into new territories. The North wanted to limit the number of slave states in the Union as well. However, many Southerners felt that a government dominated by free or abolitionist states could endanger existing slaveholdings.The South wanted to protect their states’ rights, and the right to own slaves. The first evidence of this came when Missouri asked to be admitted to the Union as a slave state. After months of discussion Congress passed the Missouri Compromise. This Compromise or legislative measure regulated the extension of slavery in the United States for the next three decades. Now the balance of free and slave states was even. Maine was admitted as a free state soon after this Compromise. To appease the South, slavery would be permitted in Louisiana Purchase territories. Southern extremists opposed any limit on the extension of slavery. Missouri and Maine were to achieve statehood simultaneously to preserve sectional equality in the Senate. Fundamentally, the Compromise was not a settlement of sectional disputes since it was an evasion that bought time for the nation without setting guidelines for solving territorial questions (Norton 263).For almost a generation, this Compromise seemed to settle the conflict between the North and South. However, when the Union acquired a huge piece of territory from Mexico this opened new ...
