by Rachel Stockton

Created on: February 13, 2009

The Compromise of 1850 was crafted by retired Senator Henry Clay, in an effort to assuage growing discord between the north and south. No one was particularly happy with the bill, and while it did delay civil war for another 10 years, it added fuel to a simmering pot that was on the verge of burning out of control.

Here's the background of the proposal: in 1848, a piece of legislation, called the Wilmot Proviso would have stipulated that all territories acquired through the Mexican War would be free states. This controversial bill passed the House, because the north had the majority vote. However, it never passed through the Senate. Even still, the W-P was a sore subject, among northerners and southerners alike.

Northern democrats, who opposed slavery, became increasingly angry with southern democrats, whom they believed controlled the party. All but one northern state approved of the Proviso; however, none of the southern states approved. Their "fear" was that slavery would slowly be eradicated if slaveholding states were surrounded by "free" abolitionist territories.

About this time, California was ready to be admitted as a free state into the Union, which made southerners unhappy. So, as part of the Compromise, Clay overrode the Missouri Compromise (which he'd also crafted 20 years earlier), which determined that all states north of Missouri's southern border would be free. In the newer Compromise, Clay allowed Utah and New Mexico (both acquisitions from the Mexican War) to decide for themselves whether or not they wished to free, or slave states.

In addition to overriding the Missouri Compromise, Clay's newest bill attempted to smooth over the ruffled feathers that resulted from Wilmot Proviso; once again, neither side was happy.

The issues of runaway slaves was also a hot spot, so another facet of the 1850 Compromise was to allow southern slave owners to hunt down and retrieve fugitive slaves who had escaped into the northern states. To balance out this provision, he suggested a ban on slavery in Washington D.C.

History has borne out that while the Compromise put a temporary lid on simmering discord, it only put off the inevitable succession of the southern states by ten years. By that time, there was no quenching the inferno that led headlong into the Civil War.

Certainly there were many contributing factors leading to the Civil War. But one could argue that the tide began to swiftly change toward War once the Wilmot Proviso came onto the scene, even though it failed to get the vote. Henry Clay's attempt to hold the country together, though valiant, couldn't keep the country from being ripped apart in the long run.

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