not only the ideals on which the country was founded but also the
possibilities of human nature itself. In any case the answer to the
first question at once suggested another, What shall we do with the
Negro? About this there was very great difference of opinion, it not
always being supposed that the Negro himself had anything whatever to
say about the matter. Some said send the Negro away, get rid of him by
any means whatsoever; others said if he must stay, keep him in slavery;
still others said not to keep him permanently in slavery, but emancipate
him only gradually; and already there were beginning to be persons who
felt that the Negro should be emancipated everywhere immediately, and
that after this great event had taken place he and the nation together
should work out his salvation on the broadest possible plane.

[Footnote 1: IV, Section 3.]

Into the agitation was suddenly thrust the application of Missouri for
entrance into the Union as a slave state. The struggle that followed
for two years was primarily a political one, but in the course of the
discussion the evils of slavery were fully considered. Meanwhile, in
1819, Alabama and Maine also applied for admission. Alabama was allowed
to enter without much discussion, as she made equal the number of slave
and free states. Maine, however, brought forth more talk. The Southern
congressmen would have been perfectly willing to admit this as a free
state if Missouri had been admitted as a slave state; but the North felt
that this would have been to concede altogether too much, as Missouri
from the first gave promise of being unusually important. At length,
largely through the influence of Henry Clay, there was adopted a
compromise whose main provisions were (1) that Maine was to be admitted
as a free state; (2) that in Missouri there was to be no prohibition of
slavery; but (3) that slavery was to be prohibited in any other states