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Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48).

The provisions of the compromise were:[1][2]


A debate over slavery in the territories erupted during the Mexican–American War, as many Southerners sought to expand slavery to the newly acquired lands and many Northerners opposed any such expansion. The debate was further complicated by Texas's claim to all former Mexican territory north and east of the Rio Grande, including areas it had never effectively controlled. These issues prevented the passage of organic acts to create organized territorial governments for the land acquired in the Mexican–American War. In early 1850, Clay proposed a package of eight bills that would settle most of the pressing issues before Congress. Clay's proposal was opposed by President Zachary Taylor, anti-slavery Whigs like William Seward, and pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and congressional debate over the territories continued. The debates over the bill are among the most famous in Congressional history, and the divisions devolved into fistfights and drawn guns on the floor of Congress.


After Taylor died and was succeeded by Fillmore, Douglas took the lead in passing Clay's compromise through Congress as five separate bills. Under the compromise, Texas surrendered its claims to present-day New Mexico and other states in return for federal assumption of Texas's public debt. California was admitted as a free state, while the remaining portions of the Mexican Cession were organized into New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory. Under the concept of popular sovereignty, the people of each territory would decide whether or not slavery would be permitted. The compromise also included a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law and banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. The issue of slavery in the territories would be re-opened by the Kansas–Nebraska Act (1854), but the Compromise of 1850 played a major role in postponing the American Civil War.

The banning slavery in any new territory to be acquired from Mexico, not including Texas, which had been annexed the previous year. It passed the House in August 1846 and February 1847 but not the Senate. Later, an effort failed to attach the proviso to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

Wilmot Proviso

The Extension of the Missouri Compromise line was proposed by failed amendments to the Wilmot Proviso by and then Stephen Douglas to extend the Missouri Compromise line (36°30' parallel north) west to the Pacific (south of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California) to allow the possibility of slavery in most of present-day New Mexico and Arizona, and southern California. That line was again proposed by the Nashville Convention of June 1850.

William W. Wick

developed by Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas as the position of the Democratic Party, was to let the (white male) residents of each territory decide by vote whether to allow slavery. It was implemented in the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, giving rise to the violence of the "Bleeding Kansas" period.

Popular sovereignty

's "Alabama Platform", endorsed by the Alabama and the Georgia legislatures and by Democratic state conventions in Florida and Virginia, called for no restrictions on slavery in the territories by the federal government or territorial governments before statehood, opposition to any candidates supporting either the Wilmot Proviso or popular sovereignty, and federal legislation to overrule Mexican anti-slavery laws.

William L. Yancey

Two free states were proposed by , who served as president from March 1849 to July 1850. As President, he proposed that the entire area become two free states, called California and New Mexico but much larger than the ones today. None of the area would be left as an unorganized or organized territory, which would avoid the question of slavery in the territories.

Zachary Taylor

Changing Texas's borders was proposed by Senator in December 1849 or January 1850. Texas's western and northern boundaries would be the 102nd meridian west and the 34th parallel north.

Thomas Hart Benton

Two southern states were proposed by Senator , with the assent of Texas, in February 1850. New Mexico would get all Texas land north of the 34th parallel north, including today's Texas Panhandle, while the area to the south, including the southeastern part of today's New Mexico, would be divided at the Colorado River of Texas into two Southern states, balancing the admission of California and New Mexico as free states.[75][76]

John Bell

The first draft of the compromise of 1850 had Texas's northwestern boundary be a straight, diagonal line from the Rio Grande 20 miles north of to the Red River (Mississippi watershed) at the 100th meridian west, the southwestern corner of today's Oklahoma.

El Paso

Proposals in 1846 to 1850 on the division of the Southwest included the following (some of which are not mutually exclusive):

Timeline of events leading to the American Civil War

Missouri Compromise

Kansas-Nebraska Act

Compromise of 1850

from the Library of Congress

Compromise of 1850 and related resources

Archived July 6, 2009, at the Wayback Machine

Texas Library and Archive Commission Page on 1850 Boundary Act

Smith, William Roy (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.).

"Compromise Measures of 1850" 

Map of North America at the time of the Compromise of 1850 at omniatlas.com