Missouri Compromise

Audience

The intended audience for the Missouri Compromise of 1820 was a broad one. Probably every member of the Senate and House of Representatives wanted to show his constituents that he was looking out for their interests.

The compromise was intended to satisfy as many Americans as possible, and therefore it was sometimes vague, avoiding direct statements of purpose that might offend any particular interest group. Further, it was meant to stave off threats of civil war by at least for the time being preventing free states from dominating the U.S. Senate. On the other hand, the compromise appeared to many northerners to be a first step toward enabling the federal government to require new states to be free states; they saw the compromise not as a federal recognition of the rights of some new states to allow slavery but as showing that the federal government had the right to regulate where and if slavery could be practiced, and they believed that this principle could eventually allow the federal government to abolish slavery.