Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 32.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[27] the reason for which the Northern members wanted to exclude Missouri as a slave State is very patent. Slavery having been found to be an industrial failure at the North had been abandoned after the Northern and Eastern States had made all that they could out of it by selling off their own slaves and by importing slaves for others, when allowed to do so.

But when this source of profit was cut off by the refusal of the South to receive any more African slaves, the Northern conscience became very tender as to the moral right of any community to derive advantage from an industrial system from which the Northern members could get no pecuniary advantage.

The Northern States were jealous of the industrial prosperity and consequent political powers of the Southern States under the slavery system, hence the abolition agitation which made itself so strongly felt in the dispute of the admission of Missouri, and which raged afterwards with ever-increasing fury.

The State of Maine was duly admitted by the concurrence of the Southern votes in Congress, on the understanding that Missouri was to be admitted likewise by the Northern votes, but the Northern members of Congress fraudulently refused to carry out their agreement and Missouri still remained excluded from her rights.

Finally she was admitted under the celebrated Missouri Compromise, by which slavery was forbidden north of latitude 36 degrees 30 minutes and permitted south of that line.

Here, again, the South committed the grave error of allowing vested rights to be abridged in order to still a temporary storm. Each time that the South agreed to a compromise she weakened herself and strengthened her adversary.