Such was the status of the slavery question at the close of the War of 1812-15, at the commencement, therefore, of the period when, withdrawing themselves from foreign complications, the people of the United States began to adjust the different parts of their political system, chiefly if not solely, to the demands of their internal interests, and to solve the problems of their {60} polity from the point of view of their domestic institutions. It is not strange, then, that from this point of time onward the powerful institution of negro slavery recognized more and more clearly its natural relations to all of these questions of internal policy and law, and sought more and more determinedly to bring the political system and the policies of the United States into accord with its own exclusive interests. For the first three or four years after the close of the War this tendency did not, as has been pointed out, appear upon the surface, but it was working in the depths. From 1820 to 1861, certainly, it furnishes the point of view for the correct elucidation of the majority of the great problems of the history of the United States. {61} CHAPTER IV. THE CREATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MISSOURI The Growth of Slavery not Seriously Checked by the Prohibition of the Foreign Slave-trade--The General Government Powerless Against Slavery in the Existing Commonwealths--The Powers of the General Government in Respect to Slavery in the Territories--The Powers of Congress in the Admission of new "States" into the Union--Slavery in the Missouri Territory--The First Petition from Missouri Territory for the Permission to form a Commonwealth--The Second Petition, and the First Bill in Congress, for the Admission of Missouri--The Tallmadge Amendment to the Bill--Passage of the Amendment by the House of Representatives--Passage of the Original Bill by the Senate--The Missouri Bill during the Session of 1819-20--Mr. Taylor's Proposition--The Bill for the Admission of Maine Reported and Passed by the House of Representatives--The Failure of Mr. Taylor's Plan--The Missouri Bill again before the House of Representatives--Mr. Taylor's Amendment to the Bill--The Independent Missouri Bill of the Senate--The Refusal of the Senate to Disconnect the two Measures--The Conference on the Subject, and the First Missouri Compromise--President Monroe's Approval of the Compromise--Review of the Points Involved in the Contest--The Revival of the Missouri Struggle--The Missouri Constitution in Congress--Mr. Lowndes' Bill for the Admission of Missouri with the Instrument Unchanged--Defeat of the Lowndes Bill in the House--Passage of the Senate Bill with a Proviso by the Senate--The Senate Bill Tabled by the House--Mr. Clay and the Second Missouri Compromise--Passage of the Second Missouri Compromise Act--The General Effects of the Decisions Reached in the Missouri Question. [Sidenote: The growth of slavery not seriously checked by the prohibition of the foreign slave-trade.]