- The original proposal was presented by Kentucky Senator Henry Clay.
- The previous attempt at keeping sectional balance and maintaining peace and union was the 1820 Missouri Compromise.
- The purpose of the Compromise of 1850 was to achieve political balance between north and south, abolitionists and supporters of slavery respectively; and to avoid disunion and war.
- The Compromise of 1850 was prompted by new territory acquired during the Mexican American war and the application of California as a free state.
- The Senate Select Committee of Thirteen drafted the legislation based on Clay’s proposal. It was bundled in an omnibus bill and was rejected by the Senate.
- Henry Clay left Congress as he was too ill from tuberculosis.
- Illinois Senator Stephen Douglass took over Clay’s proposal and separated the omnibus bill into individual bills. Each bill got a majority vote.
- The debate lasted nine months.
- The vote was divided into sectional differences as oppose to party lines.
- President Zachary Taylor was strongly opposed to the bill. His death paved its approval in the Senate.
- President Millard Fillmore supported the Compromise of 1850 and signed it into law on September 1850.
- The Compromise of 1850 included the following provisions:
- The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.
- Slave trade in Washington DC was abolished, but slave ownership continued.
- California was accepted in the Union as a free state.
- Governments in New Mexico and Utah were organized.
- Texas received 10 million dollars in exchange of land it gained during the Mexican American War. It set the present geographical boundaries of the state.
- Before the banning of slave trade in Washington DC, the capital was squared shaped. Today is shaped like a backwards letter “L”. Alexandria was a successful slave trade market and requested to go back to Virginia, leaving DC its current shape.
- The Compromise of 1850 brought peace for a decade.
- The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act could not achieve sectional balance over the spread of slavery. Bleeding Kansas, The Dred Scott Case and the Harper’s Ferry raid further divided the nation and triggered the inevitable, the American Civil War.