In 1849 California adopted a constitution banning slavery and applied for admission to the United States. Ten Southern senators protested, insisting that California’s statehood would violate the rights of slaveholding states to “equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union.” The senators predicted the Union’s dissolution.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
Protest of certain Senators against the bill for the admission of California into the Union, August 14, 1850
The Compromise of 1850
After the Mexican War, the question of whether to allow or prohibit slavery in the new western territories threatened to rupture the Union. Slavery’s extension to new states could give the slaveholding South a majority in the Senate; its prohibition would favor the North. Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky attempted to diffuse the controversy by offering resolutions on slavery and western land. The Senate debated Clay’s proposals for seven months. When Clay’s proposal failed, Congress repackaged the proposal into a series of bills known as the Compromise of 1850. In the Compromise of 1850, Congress admitted California as a free state; settled boundaries of Texas and New Mexico; created a territorial government for Utah; upheld the rights of slaveholders over escaped slaves; and banned slave trading in the nation’s capital.
In 1849 California adopted a constitution banning slavery and applied for admission to the United States. Ten Southern senators protested, insisting that California’s statehood would violate the rights of slaveholding states to “equal enjoyment of the territory of the Union.” The senators predicted the Union’s dissolution.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
