LAD #13

The Compromise of 1850 was passed by the U.S. Congress to settle slavery issues and to avert the dissolution of the Union. It stemmed from the request for statehood by the territory of California in 1849, which included a constitution banning slavery. California's admission of the Union would tip the balance in favor of free states; sixteen free states to fifteen slave states. A balance had been achieved with the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which tried to settle the growing slavery issue at that time by admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. The proposed admission of California in 1850 was further complicated by unresolved slavery questions in the vast southwestern territory that had been ceded to the United States after the war with Mexico ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The Compromise of 1850 called for the admission of California as a free state as well as the organization of the ceded southwestern land into the territories of New Mexico and Utah, without mention of slavery. It stated that, when the territories became states, voting citizens living in those territories could then decide on their slavery status, a solution known as popular sovereignty. The compromise also settled the boundary dispute between Texas and New Mexico and called for prohibition of slavery in the District of Columbia. The act was so severe and the outrage against it in the North so intense that it led to heavy abuses and therefore defeated its own purpose. The number of escapees increased, as did the number of abolitionists who took up the cause against slavery. Putting the law into effect only led to more animosity between North and South, and when South Carolina justified its secession from the Union in December 1860, it listed the personal liberty laws as one of its grievances. The Fugitive Slave Act was not repealed until June 28, 1864, well into the Civil War. The Compromise of 1850, created in an effort to stave off war, actually may have fostered sectional tensions. Ultimately, it led to a Republican victory in 1860 and to Southern secession.