Ye Ole Fashioned Legalese

The good news? This bill contains only thirty-four sentences. The bad news? Those thirty-four sentences use nearly two thousand words.

The Missouri Compromise: exposure therapy for people who are scared of run-on sentences.

Legal language has come a looong way since 1820, but at the time this was the fashion in which such bills would be written. (Don't worry, guys: other prose from the time period is way more accessible. Don't let this doc keep you away from reading Austen.)

The lengthy, unambiguous style was meant to eliminate any room for abusing the good will of Congress in granting Missouri the right to self-determination.

A decent example comes from Section 2's discussion of state boundaries:

That the said state shall have concurrent jurisdiction on the river Mississippi, and every other river bordering on the said state so far as the said rivers shall form a common boundary to the said state; and any other state or states, now or hereafter to be formed and bounded by the same, such rivers to be common to both; and that the river Mississippi, and the navigable rivers and waters leading into the same, shall be common highways, and for ever free, as well to the inhabitants of the said state as to other citizens of the United States, without any tax, duty impost, or toll, therefor, imposed by the said state. (2.2)

No fuzzy wording; no unclear terms. At once densely packed and comparatively uncomplicated.