The Compromise of 1850 was an intricate package of five bills, passed
on September 4, 1850, defusing a four-year confrontation between the
slave states of the South and the free states of the North that arose
from expectation of territorial expansion of the United States with the
Texas Annexation (December 29, 1845) and the following Mexican-American
War (1846–1848). It avoided secession or civil war at the time and
quieted sectional conflict for four years until the divisive
Kansas–Nebraska Act.
SHORT TERM EFFECTS
Texas gave up its claim to New Mexico but received debt relief, El Paso,
and the Texas Panhandle. The South did not get their keenly desired
Pacific territory in Southern California or extension of the Missouri
Compromise line allowing slavery anywhere south of parallel 36°30'
north. As compensation, the South got the possibility of slave states
via popular sovereignty in the new New Mexico Territory and Utah
Territory, which however were unsuited to plantation agriculture and
populated by non-Southerners; a stronger Fugitive Slave Act, which in
practice outraged Northern public opinion; and preservation of slavery
in the national capital, though the slave trade was banned there except
in the Virginia portion of the District of Columbia which rejoined
Virginia.
LONG TERM EFFECTS
Civil war
