Our Documents: Missouri Compromise (1820)

A lesson plan from the producers of the 16-episode PBS series "Freedom: A History of US" that examines the goal of the Missouri Compromise. A good lesson for comparing and contrasting life in the North and South in the run-up to the...

High schoolers use a map of the Missouri Compromise to explain the geographical changes it brought to the U.S. and why the changes provoked a debate over the expansion of slavery in the U.S.

The Compromise of 1850 attempted to settle sectional disagreements about slavery in the volatile pre-Civil War period. The compromise, actually a series of bills, had an enormous impact on the nation's slow march to civil war. See...

Interactive map showing free states and territories and slave states and territories before and after the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Click on the map to choose before or after and the key. Shockwave required.

High schoolers examine the controversies over slavery's expansion and how the federal tariffs further entrenched the dividing line between northern and southern interests.

Our Documents is home to one hundred milestone documents that influenced that course of American history and American democracy. Includes full-page scans of each document, transcriptions, background information on their significance, and...

An outstanding, interactive copy of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the legislation that repealed the Missouri Compromise. Historical context included, as well as links to larger images, a typed transcript, and a downloadable PDF file.

Students analyze an interactive map of the Missouri Compromise to identify the regions and their relation to slavery. In this pre-civil war era lesson plan, students read primary source documents and research online to answer questions...

Discusses the issue of slavery and the political battles that ensued as the country expanded westward. The Missouri Compromise was the result of one such battle. [11:01]

This PBS site offers information about the compromise that settled the question of whether slavery would be allowed in the vast area acquired from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803.