When the Constitution was presented at the next session of Congress, it was found to contain a clause requiring the legislature to pass laws to prevent free persons of color from settling in the state, and as the admission of Maine was complete, the Northern members took occasion to object to the admission of Missouri because of this clause, though Ohio and Indiana had passed laws forbidding the settling of free persons of color in those states, and there was an old law of Massachusetts to the same effect, still unrepealed. A resolution offered in the House for the admission of Missouri, with its Constitution as it stood, was defeated by a vote of 78 to 93, those voting in the negative being Northern members. After much discussion and excitement and the defeat in the House of an effort to compromise the question, on motion of Mr. Clay, a joint committee was appointed to take the subject into consideration, and this committee reported a joint resolution for the admission of Missouri, after the state legislature should have given a solemn pledge, that the Constitution should not be construed to authorize any act and that no act should be passed "by which any of the citizens of either of the states should be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which they are entitled under the Constitution of the United States." The President being authorized to announce by proclamation, the adoption of the pledge, and Missouri then to become a state in the Union, this resolution was adopted, the vote being 86 to 52 in the House, all the votes in the negative, excepting four, being given by Northern members and the four Southern members not being willing to submit to the concession. Since the rejection of the proposition for compromise in the House on the same basis, news had been received of the final ratification by Spain of the treaty for the cession of Florida, and as by that treaty the United States relinquished all claim to Texas, thus reducing the whole of the territory south of 36° 30´ and west of the Mississippi to the Territory of Arkansas, comprising the present state of Arkansas and the small tract of Indian country west of it, while there remained an immense domain north of that parallel, stretching across the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific, a few Northern members were induced to cast their votes for the last proposition, thus securing its passage.