Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, a leading statesman known as “The Great Compromiser” for his work on the Missouri Compromise was the primary writer of the Compromise of 1850. Fearful of the growing divide between North and South over the issue of slavery, he hoped to avoid civil war by enacting another compromise.

The Compromise of 1850:

1. admitted California as a free state

2. left Utah and New Mexico territories to decide for themselves whether to be slave states or a free states ( a concept known as popular sovereignty)

3. defined a new Texas-New Mexico boundary

4. made it easier for slaveowners to recover runways under the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 

5. abolished the slave trade (buying and selling) within Washington, D.C., the nation's capital

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was particularly problematic development for northerners. Despite the fact that a fugitive slave clause was included in the Constitution, it was rarely recognized or enforced. The clause included in the Compromise of 1850 required citizens in the north to assist in apprehending runaway slaves or face fines and/or jail time. For free people of color in the north the clause was particularly frightening because if any white person claimed that the free person was a slave they could be apprehended and shipped to the south.  Outrage over the new law only increased traffic along the Underground Railroad during the 1850s. Northern states avoided enforcing the law and by 1860, the number of runaways successfully returned to slaveholders hovered around just 330.