On February 15-16, 2019, the University of Missouri’s Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, with sponsorship from the Missouri Humanities Council – both partners in the Bicentennial Alliance – convened the first-ever international conference reassessing the national crisis (1818-1821) that erupted when Missouri applied for statehood. The best papers presented at the conference are being developed into a book, to be published by the University of Missouri Press in conjunction with the bicentennial commemorations in 2021. Entitled A Fire-Bell in the Past: Reassessing the Missouri Crisis at 200, this lively volume of new scholarship is edited by Profs. Jeffrey L. Pasley (MU/Kinder Institute) and John Craig Hammond (Pennsylvania State University).