That there was much real suffering during this panic admits of no doubt. Niles estimated that not less than twenty thousand persons were seeking employment in Philadelphia in the summer of 1819, and quite as many wandering in the streets of New York looking for work. In both cities soup-houses were established by private charitable societies to relieve distress in the following winter. In the city of New York, during the year 1816, over nineteen hundred unfortunates were imprisoned for debt; and of these, over seven hundred owed less than twenty-five dollars. But it was not merely the city dweller who felt the pinch of poverty. Thousands of Western settlers who had purchased land under the Act of 1800, which permitted deferred payments, found themselves insolvent. More than $21,000,000, one fifth of the national debt, remained unpaid in the year 1820. To the importunities of these debtors Congress had yielded from time to time, but it was not until 1821 that it passed the first general relief act. Those who had not completed their payments within the prescribed five years were then permitted to give up the land which they had not paid for, and to apply the payments already made to the full purchase of the lands which they retained. Arrears of interest were remitted. In 1820, Congress passed an act which wrought a far-reaching change in the disposal of the public domain. The credit system was abolished outright. After July 1, 1820, land was to be sold for cash at a minimum price of a dollar and a quarter an acre, and in eighty-acre tracts. A payment of one hundred dollars, then, would make a settler the owner of eighty acres in his own right. The prospect of actual ownership of a small tract made him far less ready to listen to the voice of the tempter in the form of the speculator, who had heretofore lured him to make larger purchases on credit than he could ever pay for by the labor of his hands. In the midst of this period of financial depression, the Territory of Missouri applied for admission into the Union. On February 13, 1819, while an enabling act was under consideration in the House of Representatives, James Tallmadge, of New York, moved an amendment which touched Southern interests to the quick. "_And provided_, That the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years." [Map: Distribution of Slaves 1820]