The traditionalistic political culture of the South eventually spread from its Southern Atlantic states to Oklahoma and Texas. Individualistic political culture spread from the Middle Atlantic States to the southern Great Lakes states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois and eventually to California. Of the three, this political culture is most closely tied in beliefs to help urban areas. Therefore, individualistic political culture has become the dominant political culture in the present-day United States. Due to political conflict, by the time of the Civil War, the Northeast, the South, and the West had emerged as the major sections of the United States, and remain the same in the U.S. today. Throughout the nineteenth century these three sections of our country expressed increasingly different views on public policy and economic development. Slavery was a major throughout the nineteenth century these three sections of our country expressed increasingly different views on public policy and economic development. Slavery was a major issue of conflict between the Northeast and the South. Slavery was abolished in the North but flourished in the South. The invention of cotton gin and the abundant fertile land increased the economic value of slaves. By 1819, the United States was comprised of twenty-two states, eleven free states and eleven slave states. The following year, Missouri applied for admission to the Union. Slavery was well established in Missouri, but would give the slave states a majority in the Senate. After two years of dispute, the issue of slavery was decided when Maine, which had been part of Massachusetts applied for statehood. The Missouri Compromise called for the admission of Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, with slavery prohibited in the remaining land of the Louisiana Purchase north of the southern boundary of Missouri. Following the Missouri Compromise, states were admitted two at a time, with one being a slave state and the other being a free state.
