To preserve the sectional balance, the South looked to its equal vote in the Senate. Missouri was a small part of a large territory called the Louisiana Purchase. This large territory is what Congress would be interested in.
Late in 1819, the Missouri Territory embraced all of the Louisiana Purchase with the exception of the segments organized as the state of Louisiana, which took place in 1812 and the Arkansas Territory, which took place in 1819. The application of the Missouri Territorial Assembly, which had originally petitioned for statehood in 1817, raised the question of the legal status of slavery in Missouri and the rest of the territory west of the Mississippi River. In 1818, there was an estimated two to three thousand slaves in the upper Louisiana country. These slaves went back to the French and Spanish rule. Congress decided to look at the proposed amendment because of the large amount of land, and how the United States of America could profit from this rich fertile crescent. .
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The Louisiana Purchase was a vast land filled with rich soil to grow crops and graze cattle on. It contained plenty of rivers, making it easy to navigate around, threw its large parcel of wealth. The Louisiana Purchase was bought for a sum of fifth-teen million dollars from France. That figures at to be about three cents per acre. It added eight hundred and twenty eight thousand square miles of land between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains to the United States national territory. France was in a large war and needed money to keep the battle going; so deciding to sell the purchase would be the most cost effective way of making the quickest cash to fund their war. It was this territory that congress wanted, but did not necessarily like the conditions that was being offered at the time; referring to adding more slave states. It increased the United States national territory about one hundred and forty percent.
