In the years of 1800 to 1850 territorial expansion basically tore the United States apart. Expansion in itself was not a debated issue coming from Manifest Destiny, almost all believed that America should expand to wherever possible. However, it was the issue of the expansion of slavery that pitted the North against the South and split our nation apart.
             The first evidence of such tension over expansion took place in 1819-1821 over the to-be state of Missouri. The territory of Missouri was of the first to be given statehood out of the Louisiana Purchase. Out of the jurisdiction of the Northwest Ordinance, Missouri saw no reason to stop its long tradition of slavery. Because of this, Missouri applied to the Union as a slave state in 1817. So far north, Missouri posed a threat of further expansion of slavery into all new territories. In early 1819, Congressman James Tallmadge proposed an amendment that would prohibit any new slaves to enter the state and said that all slave children born after the date of admission would be set free at the age of twenty-five. Tallmadge's amendment received almost complete opposition from Southern Congressmen. This could be seen when the amendment passed the North dominated House of Representatives twice, but was turned down by the balanced Senate. In December 1819, Maine applied for statehood as a free state and in the end a compromise was reached where Maine would enter the Union as a free state, Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state, and in the remaining Louisiana territory slavery would be prohibited north of 36°30? (Mason-Dixon Line). This is now known as the Missouri Compromise, commonly said to be the beginning of American Sectionalism. The South realized a need for political unity in order to maintain thepeculiar institution? and alerted the whole country to the political problems inherent to westward expansion.
             The next major controversy was over the admission of Texa...