| The first petition from Missouri Territory for the permission to form a Commonwealth. |
Before the beginning of the year 1818, the population in the Territory which looked to the town of St. Louis as its centre had begun to agitate the question of the establishment of Commonwealth government. During the Congressional session of 1817-18, petitions appeared in the House of Representatives from this population, praying for the erection of that part of Missouri Territory, bounded roughly by the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude on the south, the line of longitude passing through the point of confluence of the Kansas River and the Missouri River on the west, the Falls of the Des Moines River and the course of that river on the north, and the Mississippi on the east, into a Commonwealth of the Union. The petitions were referred and reported on, and the bill presented reached the stage for debate in the committee of the Whole House, but was not taken up during the session.
| The second petition, and the first bill in Congress, for the admission of Missouri. |
Early in the following session, that of 1818-19, the Speaker of the House of Representatives presented a memorial from the Territorial legislature of Missouri which contained substantially the same prayer as the petitions presented at the preceding session. This memorial was immediately referred to a committee for report, but the bill which grew out of the petitions and the memorial was not brought forward for debate in the committee of the Whole House until February 13th, 1819.
| The Tallmadge amendment to the bill. |
It was upon this day, and during this first debate, that Mr. James Tallmadge, of New York, offered the famous amendment to the bill, which precipitated a discussion, that lasted for more than a year, upon the great subject of the distribution of powers between the United States Government and the Commonwealths, a discussion in which all the great legal lights of both Houses of Congress participated, and during the course of which the whole country hung with painful anxiety upon the outcome. It was the first great trial of the Constitution under the issue of a domestic question, a question which threatened to divide the country upon geographic lines, a question which, therefore, threatened the dissolution of the Union.
The exact words of this amendment are essential to a correct comprehension of the question involved. It reads: "And provided that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years."
| The debate upon the Tallmadge amendment. |