Tallmadge Amendment Triggers Missouri Crisis — National Debate Over Slavery's Expansion

On February 13, 1819, New York Congressman James Tallmadge Jr. introduced an amendment to Missouri's statehood bill that would ban the further introduction of slavery into Missouri and free the children of enslaved people there at age 25. The amendment passed the House but was blocked by the Senate. It ignited a national crisis that John Quincy Adams called 'a title page to a great tragic volume.' Slaveholders saw it as an existential threat; Northern free-soilers viewed Missouri's admission as a test of slavery's future. The crisis was temporarily resolved by the Missouri Compromise of 1820, but the underlying conflict between free-labor and slave-labor expansion was laid bare.