1850 – The Compromise of 1850 transfers a third of Texas's claimed territory to federal control in return for the U.S. federal government assuming $10 million of Texas's pre-annexation debt. The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states during the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). The provisions of the compromise included a provision that approved California's request to enter the Union as a free state, and strengthened fugitive slave laws with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The compromise also banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. (while still allowing slavery), defined northern and western borders for Texas, while establishing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico that included no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be a free or slave state, and established a territorial government for the Territory of Utah, also with no restrictions if the territory would become a slave or free state. A debate over slavery in the territories erupted during the Mexican–American War, as many white Southerners sought to expand slavery to the newly acquired lands and many Northerners opposed any such expansion. The debate was further complicated by Texas's claim to all former Mexican territory north and east of the Rio Grande, including areas it had never effectively controlled. These issues prevented the passage of organic acts to create organized territorial governments for the land acquired in the Mexican–American War. In early 1850, Clay proposed a package of eight bills that would settle most of the pressing issues before Congress. Clay's proposal was opposed by President Zachary Taylor, anti-slavery Whigs like William Seward, and pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun, so congressional debate over the territories continued. The debate over the bill was among the most famous in Congressional history, where the divisions deteriorated into fistfights and the drawing of guns on the floor of Congress.
