When Missouri sought statehood in 1820, it sparked a heated debate that eventually ended with the Missouri Compromise, which allowed it to be a slave state with the admission of Maine as a free state. Prior to this compromise, various proposals were floated all swirling around allowing or prohibiting slavery in the new state. A majority of Virginia's representatives in Congress desired the retention of slavery in Missouri at any price, however Floyd was silent, and his biographer, Charles Henry Ambler, has inferred from various statements made by Floyd, that he preferred immediate statehood to an extension of slavery, though admits there is "little evidence to show that he opposed the latter on general principles." However, when anti-slavery forces in Congress tried to expunge a clause in Missouri's state constitution that would have prevented free blacks from settling in the state, Floyd opposed on the principle of state's rights to decide its own matters and also because he was opposed to the growing Federal power. He stated: