The eight resolutions of the Compromise of 1850 addressed unresolved questions related to slavery, balancing the interests of the antislavery North with those of the slaveholding South. The first four resolutions covered issues in western territories. The others concerned slavery and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., the return of fugitive slaves, and rights of slaveholding states.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
Henry Clay's resolutions proposing the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850
Balancing Sectional Interests
In crafting the Compromise of 1850, Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky sought to sustain the Union by balancing sectional interests. Northerners supported the provisions outlawing the slave trade in the District of Columbia and admitting California to the Union as a free state; Southerners favored the stricter Fugitive Slave Law and the continuation of slavery in the nation’s capital. After Congress rejected Clay’s original omnibus bill on the territories, Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois engineered passage of its key provisions as separate resolutions.
The eight resolutions of the Compromise of 1850 addressed unresolved questions related to slavery, balancing the interests of the antislavery North with those of the slaveholding South. The first four resolutions covered issues in western territories. The others concerned slavery and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., the return of fugitive slaves, and rights of slaveholding states.
Records of the U.S. Senate, National Archives and Records Administration
