Foreseeing this condition, a few Southern planters began a movement for the extension of territory to the south and west immediately after the adoption of the Missouri Compromise.

When Arkansas was admitted in 1836, there was a prospect of the immediate annexation of Texas as a slave State.

This did not take place until nine years later, but the propaganda, the object of which was the extension of slave territory, could not be maintained by those Who contended that slavery was a curse to the country.

Virginia, therefore, and other border slave States, as they became committed to the policy of expansion, ceased to tolerate official public utterances against slavery.
Three more or less clearly defined sections appear in the later development of the crusade.

These are the New England States, the Middle States, and the States south of North Carolina and Tennessee.