had been done, and whose scruples had been revived and strengthened by their contact with the popular feeling at home, were ready to seize upon this obnoxious clause in the state Constitution, to reopen the whole question. A good many Southern men, too, disliked the compromise, on account of the exclusion of slavery from the territory north of 36° 30′. The most prudent among them were willing to yield a point on the questioned constitutional clause, rather than put in jeopardy the solid advantage of the admission of Missouri as a slave state. But the bulk of them were for insisting upon the reception of the state without further condition. A few Southern extremists still thought of upsetting the 36° 30′ restriction. In the Senate, Eaton of Tennessee offered to the resolution admitting Missouri an amendment providing “that nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to give the assent of Congress to any provision of the Constitution of Missouri, if any there be, that contravenes the clause in the Constitution of the United States that ‘the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states,’ ” — the point being that, as free persons of color were citizens in some states, for example, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire, the proposed Constitution of Missouri deprived them in that state of the privileges granted them by the federal Constitution. After long and acrimonious debates, the resolution with this amendment passed the Senate, on December 12, 1820, by a majority of eight.
