President and the Secretary of State an old claim for a “half-outfit,” $4,500, due him as a commissioner of the United States in negotiating a commercial convention with Great Britain in 1815. He returned to Kentucky with the hope of repairing his fortunes by industrious application to his legal practice; and at the meeting of the sixteenth Congress for its second session, in November, 1820, a letter from him was read to the House, in which, “owing to imperious circumstances,” he resigned the office of Speaker, as he would not be able to attend until after the Christmas holidays. In fact he did not reach Washington until January 16, 1821. Then his services were urgently in demand.
The “Missouri question,” which in the previous session seemed to have been put to rest by the compromise, had risen again in a new, unexpected, and threatening form. The bill passed at the last session had authorized the people of Missouri to make a state constitution without any restriction as to slavery. The formal admission of the state was now to follow. But the Constitution with which Missouri presented herself to Congress not only recognized slavery as existing there; it provided also that it should be the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as would be necessary to prevent free negroes or mulattoes from coming into or settling in the state. This was more than those Northern men who accepted the compromise of the last session had bargained for. Not a few of them, at heart profoundly dissatisfied with what
