The Great Compromise of 1850
The Great Compromise of 1850 regards five laws that passed relating to slavery.
In the fall of 1850 California asked for permission to enter the Union as a free state. More and more slave free states the US Senator Henry Clay produced a series of ways to better these laws and ban slave states. After permission was granted California became a slave free state and led to Utah wanting the same rules. Next an act took off that concerned the territory line of New Mexico and Texas, this later led to New Mexico establishing a territorial government.
- Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico, over which it had threatened war, as well as its claims north of the Missouri Compromise Line. It retained the Texas Panhandle and the federal government took over the state's public debt.
- California was admitted as a free state with its current boundaries.
- The South prevented adoption of the Wilmot Proviso that would have outlawed slavery in the new territories, and the new Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory were allowed, under the principle of popular sovereignty, to decide whether to allow slavery within their borders. In practice, these lands were generally unsuited to plantation agriculture and their settlers were uninterested in slavery.
- The slave trade (but not slavery altogether) was banned in Washington D.C.
- The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including in those states and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to actively assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters in the states and territories permitting slavery.
In the fall of 1850 California asked for permission to enter the Union as a free state. More and more slave free states the US Senator Henry Clay produced a series of ways to better these laws and ban slave states. After permission was granted California became a slave free state and led to Utah wanting the same rules. Next an act took off that concerned the territory line of New Mexico and Texas, this later led to New Mexico establishing a territorial government.