the compromise of 1850 was an attempt to resolve sharp differences in the u.s. over the slavery issue differences that were threatening to split the country in two southerners insisted that slavery be legal in the territory one during the recent mexican-american war northerners wanted that territory free of slavery that was one of the big issues in the compromise of 1850 new territory had been acquired from Mexico during the Mexican War there was California which actually had formed the Constitution and wanted to be admitted to the Union as a free state there were those other territories New Mexico Utah Arizona what's going to be the status of slavery there southerners feared that if slavery were banned in the new territories the Union might tip in favor of abolition and destroy their economy southern states began to threaten secession to try to keep the country together three veteran politicians Whig senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster and Democratic Senator John Calhoun eventually forged a compromise they proposed a series of laws designed to placate both sides the final deal offered something to both sides but only after months of debates so heated one angry senator actually pulled a gun on the Senate floor California is admitted as a free state and for the rest of that Mexican territory popular sovereignty is implemented that is the people in those territories will basically decide whether they want slavery or not that's in other words putting the question off to the future some of these new laws also please southern slave owners there's a new Fugitive Slave Law much tougher than in the past to try to use the power of the federal government to capture and return slaves who managed to make it to the north it therefore means that states like Massachusetts states like Pennsylvania states like to some extent Connecticut and a few others that had actually begun to develop a fairly healthy abolitionist tradition we're now being forced by the government to implicate themselves in the process of actually capturing human beings and it meant that their courts would actually be involved their citizens would be involved as sheriff would be involved the government clearly aligned itself with the slaveholders in this regard and it demonstrated that slavery was centrally part of American society in politics it's not just a sectional institution it has a very national basis politicians hailed the compromise of 1850 as a great triumph of statesmanship one that would settle tensions over slavery once and for all but the compromise only postponed conflict for a few years by 1856 the battle over another new territory Nebraska would set the country on the path to war