Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That the inhabitants of that portion of the Missouri territory included within the boundaries herein after designated, be, and they are hereby, authorized to form for themselves a constitution and state government, and to assume such name as they shall deem proper; and the said state, when formed, shall be admitted into the Union, upon an equal footing with the original states, in all respects whatsoever. (1.1)

These lines set the tone for the rest of the Compromise: this is going to be a piece of legislation as efficient as a German engineer and as to-the-point as a New Yorker ordering a breakfast sandwich. No poetry here.

The opening unambiguously declares what the purpose of this piece will be: the formation of the Missouri territory into a formal state of the Union, capable of its own self-determination with respect to its laws and constitution.

Nothing about slavery, nothing about dividing the U.S. in half…all those little details would just get in the way of the "states right"' narrative that swirled around the issue of Missouri from 1819 to the Compromise's completion.