The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present-day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty", without the Wilmot Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and enacting a newThe Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850, which defused a four-year political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired during the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The compromise, drafted by Whig Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky and brokered by Clay and Democratic Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, reduced sectional conflict. Controversy arose over the Fugitive Slave provision. The Compromise was greeted with relief, but each side disapproved of some of its specific provisions:
Texas surrendered its claim to New Mexico as well as its claims north of 36°30'. It retained the Texas Panhandle, and the federal government took over the state's public debt.California was admitted as a free state, with its current boundaries.The South prevented adoption of the Wilmot Proviso that would have outlawed slavery in the new territories,and the new Utah Territory and New Mexico Territory were allowed, under popular sovereignty, to decide whether to allow slavery in their borders. In practice, these lands were generally unsuited to plantation agriculture, and their settlers were uninterested in slavery.The slave trade, but not slavery altogether, was banned in the District of Columbia.A more stringent Fugitive Slave Law was enacted.The Compromise became possible after the sudden death of President Zachary Taylor, who, although a slave owner, wanted to exclude slavery from the Southwest. Whig leader Henry Clay designed a compromise, which failed to pass in early 1850 because of opposition by both pro-slavery southern Democrats, led by John C. Calhoun, and anti-slavery northern Whigs. Upon Clay's instruction, Douglas then divided Clay's bill into several smaller pieces and narrowly won their passage, over the opposition of radicals on both sides.
