The second election of Monroe, in 1820, was accomplished without a contest. Out of 231 electoral votes, but one was cast against him, and that for John Quincy Adams. Mr. Tompkins, the candidate for Vice-President, was only a little less fortunate, there being 14 scattering votes against him. Neither party, if indeed there was a Federalist party left made any nominations. The Missouri Compromise. The second session of the 17th Congress opened on the 4th day of March, 1820, with James Monroe at the head of the Executive Department of the Government, and the Democratic party in the majority in both branches of the Federal Legislature. The Cabinet at that time was composed of the most brilliant minds of the country, indeed as most justly remarked by Senator Thomas H. Benton in his published review of the events of that period, it would be difficult to find in any government, in any country, at any time, more talent and experience, more dignity and decorum, more purity of private life, a larger mass of information, and more addiction to business, than was comprised in the list of celebrated names then constituting the executive department of the government. The legislative department was equally impressive. The exciting and agitating question then pending before Congress was on the admission of the State of Missouri into the Federal Union, the subject of the issue being the attempted tacking on of conditions restricting slavery within her limits. She was admitted without conditions under the so-called compromise, which abolished it in certain portions of the then province of Louisiana. In this controversy, the compromise was sustained and carried entirely by the Democratic Senators and members from the Southern and slaveholding States aided and sanctioned by the Executive, and it was opposed by fifteen Senators from non-slaveholding States, who represented the opposite side on the political questions of the day. It passed the House by a close vote of 86 to 82. It has been seriously questioned since whether this act was constitutional. The real struggle was political, and for the balance of power. For a while it threatened the total overthrow of all political parties upon principle, and the substitution of geographical parties discriminated by the slave line, and thus destroying the proper action of the Federal government, and leading to a separation of the States. It was a federal movement, accruing to the benefit of that party, and at first carried all the Northern democracy in its current, giving the supremacy to their adversaries. When this effect was perceived, democrats from the northern non-slaveholding States took early opportunity to prevent their own overthrow, by voting for the admission of the States on any terms, and thus prevent the eventual separation of the States in the establishment of geographical parties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line.