A series of measures passed by the US Congress to end controversy over the extension of slavery in the territories beyond existing state boundaries. It was agreed that Maine would enter the Union of the United States as a free state and Missouri as a slave state and that slavery would be prohibited elsewhere in the Louisiana Purchase north of 36° 30′. This held out to the South the prospect of Florida and Arkansas being admitted as slave states, while securing the greater proportion of unsettled territory to the free North. The Compromise of 1820 temporarily laid the issue of slavery to rest, but the drawing of precise geographical lines between slave and non-slave areas led to fresh divisions.