The Senate appointed a select Committee of Thirteen, with Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky as chair, to report on Clay’s compromise resolutions. Clay’s committee report sought to balance the conflicting interests of Northern and Southern states regarding the volatile issue of slavery, which threatened to disrupt the Union.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
Senate report of the Committee of Thirteen offering Henry Clay's compromises on the extension of slavery, May 8, 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.
The Senate appointed a select Committee of Thirteen, with Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky as chair, to report on Clay’s compromise resolutions. Clay’s committee report sought to balance the conflicting interests of Northern and Southern states regarding the volatile issue of slavery, which threatened to disrupt the Union.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
