Admission of new states

The general policy established was that there would be an equal number of free and slave states in the Senate as more states joined the Union. The 1820 Missouri Compromise was an attempt of maintaining such a balance, admitting Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state. The compromise notably provided the condition of the 36° 30' parallel division, states north of the parallel being free and states south being slave states.^[1] However, other controversial developments that sought to alter this compromise emerged. The 1846 Wilmot Proviso was a failed proposal that sought to ban slavery across all territory acquired from the Mexican American War under the pretence that Congress could legally restrict slavery but could not establish it. The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act asserted the doctrine of “popular sovereignty,” where settlers of a territory could elect whether their state would allow the institution of slavery or not. This notably led to waves of violence and struggles for electoral control in “Bleeding Kansas” that lasted from 1854 to 1861, when Kansas was finally admitted as a free state.^[2] With the admittance of California (1850) and Minnesota (1858) into the Union as free states, the balance was lost with a total of 15 slave states to 17 free states, deeply angering slave states who saw the North as unjustly imposing power over the South.

[P1] Northern states sought to impose their power over Southern states through gaining a majority in the Senate. [P2] States alone have the power to democratically elect whether to establish specific institutions or not.