On May 8, 1850, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky presented the select committee’s proposals, consolidating the resolutions into a single bill called an “omnibus”—the term for a large vehicle that carried diverse passengers. On this page, a clerk tracked the bill through numerous Senate debates, from its first reading in May to its collapse in July.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
S. 225, Omnibus Bill and amendments relating to slavery in the territories, endorsement page, May 8–July 30, 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.
On May 8, 1850, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky presented the select committee’s proposals, consolidating the resolutions into a single bill called an “omnibus”—the term for a large vehicle that carried diverse passengers. On this page, a clerk tracked the bill through numerous Senate debates, from its first reading in May to its collapse in July.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
