The required pledge was given by the legislature of Missouri, and that state was thus admitted into the Union in 1821. For a long time, the arrangement by which the passage of the enabling act for Missouri was secured, was called _compromise_, and the line of 36° 30´ was called "The Missouri Compromise Line." The subject was fully explained by Mr. Clay in the Senate in 1850, and it will be seen that the arrangement was no compromise at all, but was merely one of those legislative expedients often adopted to secure the passage of a measure. As it passed, the restriction was merely a legislative enactment, liable to repeal at any time like any other law. But few of the Northern members agreed to the arrangement, and at the very next session of Congress, the great mass of them repudiated the idea of its being a compromise by voting against the admission of Missouri, upon a mere pretext. The only compromise made at all was that made with the state of Missouri about the construction of her Constitution. Nevertheless, the Southern States were always to regard this legislative adoption of the line 36° 30´ as a settlement of the question of slavery in the territories, provided it was adhered to as such in principle and spirit, but it was not accepted by the Northern people in that light and was made by them the ground-work for new demands and encroachments. The proposition for the prohibition of slavery in the territories, was not one in favor of the freedom of the slaves themselves, as their introduction into those territories would not increase the number of slaves, but would expand them on a wider sphere, thus rendering it easier to adopt measures for emancipation, at least in some of the states if that was desirable, and making the condition of the slaves more comfortable if emancipation did not take place; while the restriction of the institution to the states where it existed, would forever close the door on any steps for its voluntary abolition and render the condition of the slaves much less desirable. Diffusion was much the best policy for both masters and slaves, and the opposition to the introduction of the latter into the territories was only a political manoeuvre for the purpose of obtaining a sectional preponderance of power, and in all of the debates, the views expressed by the advocates of the restriction tended to the furtherance of that object. By the final ratification of the treaty between the United States and Spain in the year 1821, Florida became a territory of the United States and a territorial government was soon formed therefor. After the admission of Missouri into the Union, there was a subsidence in the agitation upon the subject of slavery for a number of years, though every now and then a petition from some Quaker meeting was received and quietly disposed of.