Missouri Constitution Unit
History of Missouri
• Thomas Jefferson, the 3rd President purchased the
Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for
$15,000,000. The Louisiana Purchase made the
land that would later become Missouri, part of the
United States.
• After the Louisiana
Purchase, Thomas
Jefferson sent a
group of explorers
to explore the new
land and to find a
quick water route
to the Pacific
Ocean. The group
was lead by
Meriwether Lewis
and William Clark
and was called the
"Corp of Discover".
• In 1812, Missouri became a Territory. William Clark
was the first governor of the new Missouri
Territory. By 1818 Missouri had 60,000 residents
living in the Missouri Territory which allowed them
to apply for statehood; however, being a slave state
Missouri was rejected for statehood.
• In 1820, Henry Clay came up with the Missouri
Compromise which allowed Missouri to become a
slave state if Maine would join the Union as a free
state. A compromise was made and on August 10,
1821 Missouri became the 24th state to join the
Union.
• In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise
of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery
and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress
and across the country. They reached a boiling point
after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the
Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset
the delicate balance between slave states and free
states.
• To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a twopart compromise, granting Missouri’s request but
also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed
an amendment that drew an imaginary line across
the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a
boundary between free and slave regions that
remained the law of the land until it was negated by
the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.
• The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many
southerners because it established the principle that
Congress could make laws regarding slavery;
northerners, on the other hand, condemned it for
acquiescing in the expansion of slavery (though only
south of the compromise line). Nevertheless, the act
helped hold the Union together for more than thirty
years.
• The Missouri compromise was repealed by the KansasNebraska Act of 1854, which established popular
sovereignty (local choice) regarding slavery in Kansas
and Nebraska, though both were north of the
compromise line. Three years later, the Supreme Court
in the Dred Scott case declared the Missouri
Compromise unconstitutional, on the ground that
Congress was prohibited by the Fifth Amendment from
depriving individuals of private property without due
process of law
First capitol (temporary until JC
was built) – St. Charles
• Capitol City – Jefferson City,
because MO Con. states
capitol must be located on
the MO River within 40 miles
of the mouth of the Osage
River. So Jefferson City was
created.
Counties in MO – 114
MO’s nickname – Show
Me State. William Vandiver’s
speech in Philadelphia in 1899,
“ I’m from Missouri, you’ve
got to show me.”
This portrayed Missourians as
tough minded skeptics.
• Located on the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers,
Missouri was an important hub of transportation
and commerce in early America, and the Gateway
Arch in St. Louis is a monument to Missouri’s role as
the “Gateway to the West.”
• The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is the country’s tallest
manmade monument at 630 feet. Completed in
1965, the structure was built to commemorate the
city’s importance in settling the west following
President Thomas Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase in
1803.
• In 1873, Susan Elizabeth Blow opened the first public
kindergarten in the United States in St. Louis after
having become interested in the kindergarten methods
of philosopher Friedrich Froebel while traveling in
Germany a few years earlier. Blow later established a
training school for kindergarten teachers.