The simultaneous admission of Missouri and Maine as states in 1820 was actually part of a larger political compromise known as the Missouri Compromise. The compromise was necessary because the issue of slavery was becoming increasingly contentious in the United States, with Southern states seeking to expand slavery into new territories and Northern states seeking to restrict its spread.
The admission of Maine as a free state and Missouri as a slave state helped to balance the number of free and slave states in the US, thus maintaining the delicate political equilibrium between North and South. The compromise also established a boundary line at latitude 36°30' north beyond which slavery would be prohibited in any new states admitted to the Union.
By preventing any one side from gaining too much power over the other, the Missouri Compromise helped to temporarily maintain peace in the United States. However, the underlying tensions between free and slave states continued to simmer and eventually led to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861.
How would the simultaneous admission of Missouri and Maine help to maintain peace in the United States?
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