A DIGITAL EXHIBIT TOUR
STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD
BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE MISSOURI HUMANITIES COUNCIL
MISSOURI'S STRUGGLE FOR STATEHOOD
Missouri’s application for statehood in 1818 unleashed boiling tensions that threatened westward expansion and raised difficult issues our Founding Fathers struggled to resolve.
Missouri shook the United States like no other new state before and made the issue of slavery unavoidable for the nation. This crisis unfolded for nearly three years and could only be resolved by a dangerous compromise, which kept the union together by dividing it into two halves: “slave” states and “free” states. The Missouri Compromise held for a few decades, but it also set up a sectional conflict in which Missouri would find itself divided as the nation plunged into Civil War.
Check out the exhibit's most recent panel discussion with the exhibit team! This virtual panel features Dr. Jeff Pasley, Dr. Steve Belko, and Claire Bruntrager of the Missouri Humanities Council.
Exhibit Panel Previews
Acknowledgments
This exhibit was developed by the Missouri Humanities Council (MHC) in consultation with the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy and is supported by The Bicentennial Alliance. Companion programming has been made possible in part from funding provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Members of the project team who worked to create this exhibit include: Dr. Steve Belko, Claire Bruntrager, Brian Grubbs, Dr. Jeff Pasley, Lawrence Celani, and Dr. Christa Dierksheide.
MHC gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their help with this traveling exhibit: Dr. Dianne Mutti Burke, Dr. Louis Gerteis, Dr. Carol Diaz-Granados, Dr. Brook Poston, and Dr. Kenneth Winn.
A special thanks to the students in the University of Missouri’s “History in the Public” course whose research helped to create this exhibit.
