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The first English settlement in Maine was the Popham Colony, which was established at Fort St. George by George Popham with the Plymouth Company in 1607, the same year that the Jamestown, Virginia settlement was taking place. The harsh winter, combined with the fact that Popham died and there was no one to step up to lead them caused the colonists to go back to Britain the next year, which is why Jamestown is said to be the first permanent colony in the New World. Originally part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Maine became a state in 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise. It is the largest state in New England at 35,384 square miles, and it is called both the Pine Tree State and Vacationland. The Missouri Compromise was established in 1820, but in the years before that, the pro-slavery and abolitionist segments of the country grew more and more tense. There were 10 states which were for slavery and 10 which were against it, and this, of course, kept the Senate balanced. In 1819, Missouri asked to be admitted into the Union which would unbalance the Senate, and Speaker of the House Henry Clay came up with a compromise which was approved by both houses, in which Missouri would be allowed in as a slave state and Maine would be admitted as a free state. The Compromise also made slavery illegal north of Arkansas, at latitude 36° 30’ with the exception of the new state, Missouri. The Maine Constitution was approved unanimously by all 210 delegates to the Maine Constitutional Convention in the autumn of 1819. On March 15, 1820, Maine elected its first governor, William King. By 1822, it had been governed by five different elected governors, due to elections of the first four to Congress and the Senate.

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