278 Opposition to the Admission of Missouri

278.Opposition to the Admission of Missouri

 Many people in the North opposed the admission of Missouri because the settlers of the proposed state were slaveholders . Mis - souri would be a slave state , and these North - erners did not want any more slave states . Originally slavery had existed in all the old thir - teen states . But every state north of Maryland had before 1819 either put an end to slavery or had adopted some plan by which slavery would gradually come to an end . Slavery had been ex - cluded from the Northwest by the famous Or - dinance of 1787( p .135). In these ways slavery had ceased to be a vital institution north of Maryland and Kentucky . Why should slavery be alowed west of the Mississippi River ? Louisiana had been admitted as a slave state (1812). But the admission of Louisiana had been provided for in the treaty for the purchase of Louisiana from France . The Southerners felt as strongly on the other side . They said that their slaves were their property , and that they had a perfect right to take their property and settle on the land belonging to the nation . Having founded a slave state , it was only right that the state should be admitted to the Union .