<Tr> <Td> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> </Td> </Tr> <Ul> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> <Li> </Li> </Ul> <P> The Missouri Compromise is the title generally attached to the legislation passed by the 16th United States Congress on May 8, 1820 . The measures provided for the admission of Maine as a free state along with Missouri as a slave state, thus maintaining the balance of power between North and South . As part of the compromise, slavery was prohibited north of the 36 ° 30 ′ parallel, excluding Missouri . President James Monroe signed the legislation on April 6, 1820 . </P> <P> Earlier, on February 3, 1819, Representative James Tallmadge Jr., a Jeffersonian Republican from New York, submitted two amendments to Missouri's request for statehood, which included restrictions on slavery . Southerners objected to any bill which imposed federal restrictions on slavery, believing that slavery was a state issue settled by the Constitution . However, with the Senate evenly split at the opening of the debates, both sections possessing 11 states, the admission of Missouri would give the South an advantage . Northern critics including Federalists and Democratic - Republicans objected to the expansion of slavery into the Louisiana Purchase territory on the Constitutional inequalities of the three - fifths rule, which conferred Southern representation in the federal government, derived from a states' slave population . Jeffersonian Republicans in the North ardently maintained that a strict interpretation of the Constitution required that Congress act to limit the spread of slavery on egalitarian grounds . </P>

What did the missouri compromise primarily state about the institution of slavery