I'm not sure I would call the Missouri Compromise a "disaster". It certainly was a means of putting off the resolution of an issue that would have to be resolved, but to fault the authors of that act would be also to fault the framers of the Constitution, who also punted on the issue. While it lasted, however, the United States remained whole and grew substantially. It's not at all clear that a resolution of the slavery question was achievable in 1820.
The Compromise held for a generation, until 1850, when it began to unravel over California, and was shredded by the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, authored by Stephen Douglas, and based on the concept of Popular Sovereignty, in which elections would determine whether a state would be admitted to the Union as slave or free. The Act, and Douglas' role in getting it through Congress, became a centerpiece of the Lincoln-Douglas debates during their 1858 contest for the Senate.
Under Popular Sovereignty, Kansas became "Bloody Kansas" as forces for and against the extension of slavery organized nationally to get as many of their own adherents as possible into the territory, and armed each side. Low-intensity warfare became the order of the day, and agreement on what constituted a fair election proved impossible in this context. The conflict in Kansas presaged the wider conflict, and key players like John Brown and William Quantrill became involved.
BTW, Delaware is in fact nearly entirely south of where the Mason-Dixon line would be if extended east from the MD/PA border.
Gen. Matt Perrenod
<i>The Blue Ghost</i>
Superintendent, Union Military Academy
1st Brigade, 2nd Division, VIII Corps, Army of the Shenandoah
UMA Class of '01
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