In 1819, Missouri requested to join the United States as a slave state. This caused the beginning of a divide among the people and offices of America. This division was the result of the slavery issue and the fear that the delicate balance between states that allowed slavery and states that did not would be broken. Half the country believed slavery was a good thing, and the other half believed it was wrong. In an effort to maintain peace between the South and North, the Missouri Compromise was passed. The compromise would allow Missouri to enter the union as a slave state and Maine as a free state; keep the number of pro-slavery and anti-slavery states uniform. However, the compromise did not accomplish everything Congress had hoped. The Missouri Compromise was a poor attempt to end the dispute over slavery in America because the Southern or Northern states didn't like it, it was unconstitutional, and it contributed to the Civil War. The Missouri Compromise was an effort to preserve the balance of power between pro-slavery states and anti-slavery states. At the time Missouri applied to become a new state, there were eleven states that allowed slavery and eleven states that did not (History.com Staff). If Missouri had joined the union, the balance would have shifted in favor of the pro-slavery states. Northerners argued that Congress had the right to ban slavery in a new state, while Southern states argued that the new states had the same right to decide whether they wanted to allow slavery as the original thirteen colonies did (History.com Staff ). The compromise did two things; first, he allowed Maine to come in as a free state and Missouri to come in with slaves; second, slavery would be prohibited in the Lo...... middle of the document ...... y. Although some people believe that the Missouri Compromise delayed the Civil War, it was actually a major cause of the war. This is because the Missouri Compromise did not resolve the issue of slavery in any way, but simply delayed addressing it. Instead of actually trying to find a real solution to the fact that the North and the South had such different principles and morals regarding slavery, the compromise simply attempted to ignore what the real problems were. Then, the compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 because Kansas and Nebraska decided whether or not to allow slavery by a vote of popular sovereignty, which made the Missouri Compromise null and void (Researchers). The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the straw that broke the camel's back in dividing the country and causing unrest over the issue of slavery. If the federal government had