Before the onset of the American Civil War, a great debate was raging among the citizens, and politicians of the Untied States. Slavery was the main issue that divided the Northern and Southern states; but another, more complicated issue was at hand. As settlers began to fulfill the "Manifest Destiny," and expand westward, new territories were being given statehood. The formation of these new states gave rise to a new question: should these new states welcome slavery within their boundaries? Three distinct positions were taken on this issue. The South, as one would logically conclude, pushed to make the new territories slave states. The North stood opposed to this, and various other parties (including some of the Western states themselves) wanted to try a new idea called popular sovereignty.
The first attempt to settle this territorial dispute was an agreement called the Compromise of 1820, which was also known as the Missouri Compromise. This compromise was formed at a time when there was equilibrium between slave and Free states, with eleven of each. The Missouri Compromise was an attempt to maintain the balance in the Senate. As Maine was admitted as a free state, Missouri was simultaneously added as a slave state. Furthermore, the latitude line of 36-30 (the southern border of Missouri) was set, and it was declared that any new territory north of this boundary would be non-slavery land. However, this compromise would be put into question as more and more settlers moved west. A new proposal called the Wilmot Proviso (after its writer, Congressman David Wilmot) suggested that slaves not be allowed into the new states. Wilmot and his party were not abolitionists; however, they just did not want slavery and its accompanying problems to be imported into newly formed states. This proposal received fierce responses from pro-slavery southerners. .
Slavery was not only an institution in the Southern states, but it was part of a lifestyle that had been going on since the founding of the United States of America.
