The correct answer is C. The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to join the Union as a free state.
Explanation:
The Compromise of 1850 sought to maintain the balance struck between the representation of slavery and non-slavery states in the United States Senate. As each US state is represented by two members in the Senate, each side wants to be able to defend its interests.
Thus, since the declaration of independence in 1776, any new accession to the Union was going in pairs: two states at the same time integrated the Union; one authorizing slavery, and the other not, so that representation in the Senate remained balanced. In addition, it had been decided by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that the limit of 36.30 ° of latitude would determine the boundary between Southern States and Northern States. But if states south of this limit prohibited slavery, as was the case in California, was the South justified in imposing it on them against their will?
At the same time, in the mid-1850s, the question of fugitive slaves arose. Indeed, many of them flee the slave states of the South to find freedom in the North. The South demanded their restitution while public opinion in the North, raised by the abolitionists, revolted against this thought.
Thus, in 1850, Henry Clay made pass in the Senate the Compromise of 1850 relating to the entry of California in the Union. The latter could integrate the Union as a free State, in exchange, the Northern States undertook to restore to those of the South any fugitive slave.
