What made is necessary?
The compromise of 1850 clarified alot of issues that the Missouri Compromise did not address. One of the leading causes of the Compromise of 1850 was that California was cut in half between being a slave state and a free state. The previous compromise cut the nation in half using an imaginary line. The north were free states, and the south were slave states. Any other state joining the union would have to fall within one of these categories. California was both above and below the imaginary line. The Compromise of 1850 helped to clarify this issue, and California was accepted into the Union as a free state.
There were also new laws created in 1850 by this compromise, including making buying and selling slaves in DC illegal (though owning slaves was not yet illegal there), the south land received from Mexico were broken up into two state (New Mexico and Utah), slaves escaping from the south to the north could be returned when captured, and bounty hunters were impowered to catch these escaped slaves for money.
What did it do?
The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills that were intended to stave off sectional strife. Its goal was to deal with the spread of slavery to territories in order to keep northern and southern interests in balance. Here is a summary of the five bills:
1. California was entered as a free state.
2. New Mexico and Utah were each allowed to use popular sovereignty to decide the issue of slavery. In other words, the people would pick whether the states would be free or slave.
3.The Republic of Texas gave up lands that it claimed in present day New Mexico and received $10 million to pay its debt to Mexico.
4.The slave trade was abolished in the District of Columbia.
5.The Fugitive Slave Act made any federal official who did not arrest a runaway slave liable to pay a fine. This was the most controversial part of the Compromise of 1850 and caused many abolitionists to increase their efforts against slavery.
