Maine Became the 23rd US State
On this day · 15 March 1820
Maine entered the Union in 1820 not on its own merits but as one half of a bargain over slavery's expansion westward.
On March 15, 1820, Maine seceded from Massachusetts and joined the Union as the nation’s 23rd state. For nearly two centuries it had been governed as a far-flung district of Massachusetts, separated from it by a stretch of New Hampshire. Frustrated settlers, who resented being ruled from distant Boston, had long pushed to break away.
Maine’s timing was no accident. Its admission was engineered as part of the Missouri Compromise, the deal Congress struck to keep the number of free and slave states even. The Senate agreed to let Missouri enter as a slave state only on the condition that Maine be admitted as a free one, preserving the fragile balance of power between North and South.
Maine entered as a free state so Missouri could enter as a slave state, each offsetting the other.
The pairing made Maine a quiet but pivotal piece of one of the era’s most consequential political bargains, a truce over slavery that would hold for three uneasy decades before unraveling.
Sources & references
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