Missouri Compromise summary

Missouri, constituent state of the United States of America. To the north lies Iowa; across the Mississippi River to the east, Illinois, Kentucky, and Tennessee; to the south, Arkansas; and to the west, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska. With the exception of Tennessee, Missouri has more neighboring

Slavery, condition in which one human being was owned by another. A slave was considered by law as property, or chattel, and was deprived of most of the rights ordinarily held by free persons. There is no consensus on what a slave was or on how the institution of slavery should be defined.

United States, country in North America, a federal republic of 50 states. Besides the 48 conterminous states that occupy the middle latitudes of the continent, the United States includes the state of Alaska, at the northwestern extreme of North America, and the island state of Hawaii, in the

Franklin Pierce was the 14th president of the United States (1853–57). He failed to deal effectively with the corroding sectional controversy over slavery in the decade preceding the American Civil War (1861–65). The son of a governor of New Hampshire, Benjamin Pierce, and the former Anna Kendrick,