Missouri

Missouri became a U.S. territory as a part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, and a year later the Lewis and Clark Expedition set out from St. Louis to explore the land. In 1812, when Louisiana became a state, the Louisiana Territory was renamed the Missouri Territory, and the state was admitted to the Union in 1821 as a part of the Missouri Compromise.

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The compromise permitted and created one slave-holding state in Missouri and one free state in Maine, and an amendment prohibited slavery in the rest of the Louisiana Purchase territory. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled the agreement unconstitutional in 1857.

Settlers flocked to the new state, attracted by cheap land and river transportation. In the early 1830s, Mormons migrated to the state, and within a few years, violence broke out between Mormons and non-Mormons. With an infamous 1838 executive order, Gov. Lilburn Boggs said Mormons should be treated as enemies and that they must be expelled from the state or “exterminated” if necessary.

Slavery was heavily concentrated along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, and slave labor played a prominent role in the state’s development. The Underground Railroad, an avenue for slaves to escape from the South, operated in Missouri in the 1840s and 1850s.

Despite its original Southern roots, by 1860 about one third of Missourians had come from Germany, Ireland, northern or eastern states, and the state grappled with its allegiance during the Civil War when both Union and Confederate governments claimed Missouri as their own.

Between the Civil War and World War II, the rural state rapidly industrialized, and the development of railroads fueled massive population and commercial growth despite severe declines during the Great Depression.

After World War II, Missouri saw moderate growth and change. The state also made slow progress in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Today, health care and professional services are among Missouri's fastest-growing industries. Anheuser-Busch built the largest beer-producing plant in the country in St. Louis, and three Fortune 500 businesses are headquartered in Missouri: pharmaceutical distributor Express Scripts Holding, manufacturer Emerson Electric and health care enterprise Centene.