As the country enlarged, this balance was preserved by the admission of
free and slave states in turn. Vermont was paired with Kentucky;
Tennessee with Ohio; Louisiana with Indiana; and Mississippi with
Illinois. In 1836, Michigan and Arkansas were admitted on the same day.
on the same day. This indicates that the jealousy of the two parties
was growing more acute.

Then Texas was admitted December 29, 1845, and was not balanced until
the admission of Wisconsin in 1848.

We must now go back to the admission of Missouri. It came into the
Union as a slave state, but by what is known as the Missouri Compromise
of 1820. By this compromise the concession of slavery to Missouri was
offset by the enactment that all slavery should be forever excluded
from the territory west of that state and north of its southern
boundary: namely, the parallel of 36 degrees 30'.

The mutterings of the conflict were heard at the time of the admission
of Texas in 1848. It was again "set forever at rest" by what was known
as the Wilmot proviso. A year or two later, the discovery of gold in
California and the acquisition of New Mexico reopened the whole
question. Henry Clay of Kentucky, a slaveholder but opposed to the
extension of slavery, was then a member of the House. By a series of
compromises--he had a brilliant talent for compromise--he once more set
the whole question "forever at rest." This rest lasted for four years.
But in 1852 Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe published "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"
an event of national importance. To a degree unprecedented, it roused
the conscience of those who were opposed to slavery and inflamed the
wrath of those who favored it.