The Compromise of 1850 acted as a temporary truce on the issue of slavery, primarily addressing the status of newly acquired territory after the Mexican-American War.
The Compromise had five provisions: a stricter fugitive slave law; California’s entry into the Union as a free state; a boundary drawn between New Mexico and Texas, stopping slavery in its tracks; the outlaw of the slave trade in Washington, DC.; and the implementation of popular sovereignty (allowing the states themselves to decide their policy on slavery) in the Western territories.
The Compromise did not resolve the issue of slavery’s expansion; instead, the fiery rhetoric surrounding the Compromise further polarized sectional divides between the North and the South.
Mexican Cession begs the slavery question
At the end of the Mexican-American War, the United States gained a large piece of western land known as the Mexican Cession. Americans immediately wondered: Would the new states allow slavery? Anti-slavery advocates did not want to abolish slavery where it already existed; rather, they wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories for the benefit of white laborers settling in the area. Abolitionists, however, thought disallowing slavery’s expansion was key to slavery eventually becoming abolished. Southern extremists, especially wealthy slaveholders, reacted with outrage at this effort to limit slavery’s expansion. They vowed to leave the Union if necessary to protect their way of life and its western growth.
Map depicting the area of the Mexican Cession, including the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, and portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Wyoming.