Though it probably did not have the same significance as it does today, Congressman for Virginia John Tyler spent St Valentine’s Day of 1820 feverishly writing to Spencer Roane of the court of Appeals, Richmond Virginia about a hot constitutional debate engulfing the relatively-young United States. The debate was essentially over whether new states admitted to the union should be, as Tyler puts it, ‘unrestricted’, i.e. allowing slavery, or ‘restricted’, i.e. prohibiting slavery. From this arose the question of Congress’s powers to enforce such terms, as well as tensions between north and south. What resulted was the Missouri Compromise.

Tyler sets out in some detail the issue. Two states were applying for admission to the United States of America: Maine and Missouri. Tyler describes that “a proposition to further inhibit the introduction of slaves as a condition of admission has been propos’d” and expresses his fears that the Bill to introduce Missouri with slavery will be voted down in the House of Representatives. For Tyler, this restriction of slavery “is unjust and unconstitutional”; he considers the Federal government to have no business deciding the conditions of entry for new states or states’ domestic policies.

The key difference between the territories up for admission in this letter was that Maine was in the north and Missouri was further south. For some time political, social and economic differences between northern and southern states had been in evidence in the United States. One explanation would suggest that the southern economy was largely based on slavery and as a consequence this influenced its politics and society whereas the slave-free north was developing in different ways with its thriving industry and increasing immigrant labor force. As a result, tensions arose around the balance of powers between the two blocks and their abilities to influence Federal government policy through their allocation of representatives in central government.

In 1820 there was a balance of slave and non-slave States and the application of Missouri as a slave State – with the admission of unrestricted Alabama in 1819 – threatened this balance. In 1819, Missouri’s admission had failed due to James Tallmadge’s introduction of an amendment that prohibited the movement of enslaved people to Missouri; the Senate did not approve the amendment and Missouri as a state was not formed. With the application of Maine in 1820, the admission of the two states was linked and a compromise was reached which meant slavery was permitted in Missouri but would be prohibited in any new states north of the 36 degree 30 parallel.

This letter gives an insight into southern fears of domination by the north. Tyler talks of “evils” visited on them and the “enemy”; there is a clear sense of entrenchment: “a crisis like the present requires stout hearts and resolute minds, and altho' we may regret the approach of the storm, it becomes us to meet it like men”. Also evident here is his fear of ultimate northern domination due to demographics over time: “The non slaveholding States now have the majority of us and that majority will be increas'd at the next census”. The Missouri compromise of 1820 allayed Tyler’s fears and brought temporary calm to the political arena; but another analysis might be that it simply postponed the Civil War by 41 years.