In the year 1820 the Missouri compromise happened. Now what is the Missouri Compromise. It was an effort by the legislative bodies, the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, to keep peace between two groups, like in most instances. But in this case they were trying to keep the peace from two groups of states, free states and the states with slaves. This was because the states that had slaves feared that since they were slightly outnumbered in the the count of slave states verse the free states, that in Congress they would be outnumbered. Before this compromise the free states were New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Vermont. The slaves states in this time period were Maryland,Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. This compromise of sorts made Missouri a slave state and Maine, which was a part of Massachusetts, a free state. It also made the land purchased during the Louisiana Purchase north of the latitude of 36°30′, except for Missouri, a non-slave area.