[Sidenote: Passage of the original bill by the Senate.]
The bill admitting Missouri, without the Tallmadge amendment, passed the Senate on March 2nd, and was returned to the House substantially in this form. The House immediately refused to agree to the striking out of the amendment, and the Senate resolved thereupon to adhere to its own act. The bill was thus lost for the session, and the Missouri question became the firebrand with which to light up fanatical and incendiary passions, both at the North and at the South, during the following recess of the Congress.
[Sidenote: The Missouri bill during the session of 1819-20.]
At the beginning of the session of 1819-20, Mr. Scott secured the reference of the memorials concerning the admission of Missouri, presented at the preceding session, to a select committee. On the following day, December 9th, Mr. Scott reported a bill from this committee, which authorized the inhabitants of that part of Missouri Territory already described to form a constitution and Commonwealth { 75} government. This new bill was read twice and referred to the committee of the Whole House for discussion.
[Sidenote: The policy of the restrictionists to delay the admission of any new Commonwealths.]
Warned by the experiences of the preceding session, the restrictionists now took another tack. They developed the plan of delaying the formation of any more Commonwealths in the Missouri Territory until Congress could abolish slavery in the whole of it.
During the debate of the preceding session upon the power of Congress to impose upon new Commonwealths, at the time of their creation, limitations not prescribed by the Constitution, it had been asserted by the restrictionists, and not denied by their opponents, that Congress could control the status of the Territories, and keep slavery out of them or abolish it in them, at its own discretion, during the period before the Territories should be permitted to assume Commonwealth government. This seems to have been considered by nearly all, if not quite all, as a fair interpretation of that provision of the Constitution which vests in Congress the power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territories of the United States. The friends of slavery restriction now determined to take advantage of this possibility, even at this late day, and go back to the work of clearing all the Territories west of the Mississippi of slavery by a Congressional Act; after which the formation of new Commonwealths in these Territories might be delayed until they could be settled by a population, which would, by local law, maintain the free status. Mr. John W. Taylor, of New York, seems to have formulated the plan. On the 14th of December he moved the appointment of a committee to consider the question of prohibiting the further introduction of slavery into the Territories of the United States west of the Mississippi. The proposition was voted, and Mr. Taylor himself was { 76} appointed the chairman of the committee. Mr. Taylor then moved that the consideration of the Missouri bill be postponed to the first Monday of the following February. The friends of this bill objected most strenuously to this proposition, and Mr. Taylor's party compromised with them by agreeing to shorten the period of the proposed postponement to the second Monday of January.