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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.
Compromise of 1850, in U.S. history, a series of measures proposed by the “great compromiser,” Sen. Henry Clay of Kentucky, and passed by the U.S. Congress in an effort to settle several outstanding slavery issues and to avert the threat of dissolution of the Union.
The Compromise of 1850 was made up of five bills that attempted to resolve disputes over slavery in new territories added to the United States in the wake of the Mexican‑American War (1846‑48).
With the Compromise of 1850, Congress had addressed the immediate crisis created by the recent territorial expansion. But one aspect of the compromise – a strengthened fugitive slave act – soon began to threaten sectional peace.
The Compromise of 1850 consists of five laws passed in September of 1850 that dealt with the issue of slavery and territorial expansion. In 1849 California requested permission to enter the Union as a free state, potentially upsetting the balance between the free and slave states in the U.S. Senate.
Congress faced with the large acquisition of territory from the Mexican American War needed a drastic compromise. The Compromise of 1850 was Henry Clay and later Congress’s solution to the problem.
Compromise of 1850, Series of measures passed by the U.S. Congress to settle slavery issues and avert secession. The crisis arose in late 1849 when the territory of California asked to be admitted to the Union with a constitution prohibiting slavery.
The Compromise of 1850 attempted to relieve those tensions, but many in the North felt the South's demands were unreasonable, especilly the hated Fugitive Slave Act, requiring northerners to return fugitives escaping enslavement in the South, and criminalizing any attempt to assist them.
Most Americans breathed a sigh of relief over the deal brokered in 1850, choosing to believe it had saved the Union. Rather than resolving divisions between the North and the South, however, the compromise stood as a truce in an otherwise white-hot sectional conflict.
The Compromise of 1850 is the name given to a series of congressional statutes enacted in September 1850 in an attempt to resolve longstanding disputes over slavery. Southern slave owners had long demanded a more stringent fugitive slave law while Northern abolitionists insisted that slavery should be abolished in the District of Columbia.