Compromise of 1850

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Recommended: Failures and successes of the 1850 compromise

At the time of the creation of the Constitution, the issue of slavery had been put off and avoided, a decision that would later lead to the controversy now known as the American Civil War. The composition, which was once the solution to problems that the Union was having, had the opposite effect in the 1850s, when arguments and different interpretations of the Constitution resulted in sectionalism, threat of secession, and tension between the North and the South. Abolitionists in the North tried to preserve the Union while abolishing slavery, while southerners supported slavery in the new territory and threatened to secede; the Compromise of 1850, especially the Fugitive Slave Law, increased these beliefs.
The Compromise of 1850 brought many changes to the United States, which is shown in the map in Document A. First off, California was not a state, and a slave free one. This angered the South because they didn’t want to be outnumbered in the Senate. Utah and New Mexico were also admitted as states and had popular sovereignty, the only states at the time to have this. Texas had to give up some of its land and got a $10 million compensation for doing so. Slave trade was outlawed in Washington, D.C., but slavery was still permitted there. However, the most important and controversial provision was the Fugitive Slave Law, which proved to cause many disputes and a lot of anger by the North who opposed it, and the South who was upset that the North wouldn’t execute it.
Due to the fact that slavery was not mentioned in the Constitution, there was a dispute over whether or not the states had the right to allow it and spread it to the new territories. There were abolitionists, such as William Lloyd Garrison, who claimed that because...

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...l states are equal, none having supremacy over the other. The states have the rights within the Constitution, which does not include slavery, and that they don’t have the right to secede from the Union. By giving the states too much sovereignty and leeway with the Constitution, the Union could be destroyed.
The Constitutions lack of citing anything about slavery is the reason why it caused sectionalism and contributed to the failure of the union it was created for. Unfortunately, the Compromise of 1850, which was meant to cause agreement, had too much disagreement over the Fugitive Slave Law, which some claimed it to be unjust kidnapping, and others a protection of slave owner’s rights and property. If slavery was dealt with at the making of the Constitution, this major dilemma could have possibly been avoided with, or at least dealt with by means other than war.

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