Congress adopted the Compromise of 1850, which admitted California to the Union as a free state without forbidding slavery in other territories acquired from Mexico. The law prohibited the sale of slaves in Washington, DC, but included a strict law requiring the return of runaway slaves to slaveholders.

Stephen A. Douglas (1913–1861) was the Democratic Illinois senator best known for his debates against Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Senate race. Elected to the US House of Representatives in 1843 and to the US Senate in 1846, Douglas was a national expansionist who supported the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the subsequent Mexican-American War. Following that war, Douglas helped pass the Compromise of 1850. Supporting popular sovereignty, Douglas was also a key figure in the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. In 1858, Douglas...

As the nation’s thirteenth president, Millard Fillmore (1800–1874) supported the Compromise of 1850 and federal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. Elected as a Whig to the vice presidency in 1848, Fillmore ascended to the presidency upon the death of President Zachary Taylor in 1849. Taylor had opposed the expansion of slavery into new states as well as compromises on the question, but the more moderate Fillmore supported Henry Clay’s Compromise of 1850 as a tool for preventing disunion. Fillmore also signed and pledged enforcement of...