Compromise of 1850

   The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed in the United States in September 1850, which defused a four-year confrontation between the slave states of the South and the free states of the North regarding the status of territories acquired during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848).

•California admitted as a free state, but fugitive slave law would be strengthened, allowing slave owners to go into the northern states to recapture escaped slaves.