It was not until the year 1820 that this recognized practice of admitting a State into the Union as a free or as a slave State, according to the character of its early settlement, and the legislation which governed the Territorial condition, incurred any serious danger of interruption. But in that year, Missouri, which was a part of the territory ceded in 1803 by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, was in a condition to seek admission into the Union. Slavery had existed there from the first settlement of the country, and when it became necessary to authorize the free inhabitants to form a State constitution, preparatory to admission into the Union, it was certain that, if left to themselves, they would not abolish a domestic relation that had long existed among them, and in which no inconsiderable part of their wealth was involved. It was proposed to require them to abolish it, as a condition precedent to the admission of the State into the Union. On this so-called “Missouri Restriction,” a violent sectional struggle ensued in Congress, which ended in what has since been known as the “Missouri Compromise.” This was embodied in the organic act, passed on the 6th of March, 1820, which authorized the people of the then Territory of Missouri to form a State constitution and government. The compromise consisted, on the one hand, in the omission of the proposed restriction as a condition of admission into the Union, and, on the other hand, in a guarantee of perpetual freedom throughout all the remainder of the Louisiana territory lying north of the parallel of 36° 30´. This was accompanied, however, by a proviso, which saved the right to reclaim any person escaping into that region, from whom labor or service was lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States. The parallel of 36° 30´ was adopted as the line north of which slavery or involuntary servitude might not be permitted to exist as an institution or condition recognized by the local law, because it was assumed as a practical fact that north of that line the slavery of the African race could not, from the nature of the climate, be profitably introduced, whilst it was equally assumed that in those portions of the Louisiana purchase south of that line, the habits of the contiguous States, and the character of the climate would induce a settlement by persons accustomed to hold and depend upon that species of labor in the cultivation of the soil, and in the wants of domestic life. The principle of the Missouri Compromise, therefore, as a final settlement made between the two sections of the Union in respect to the whole of the Louisiana purchase, was that north of the parallel of 36° 30´, slavery could never be introduced, but that south of that line, slavery might be established according to the will of the free inhabitants. Regarded in the light of a division of this vast territory, this compromise secured to the North quite as