What are the major terms of the compromise of 1850?

Answer 1

The five terms were: 1 - California had to be admitted as a free State, that is with its Constitution that forbade the slavery. 2 - Provisional territorial governments had to be elected on all remaining territories which were acquired from Mexico, provided that slavery would have neither admitted nor forbidden, but postponing the question to the future, when new states would have been formed. 3 - The excessive territorial claims of Texas had to be rejected, but securing to it a territorial extent which, however, would have made Texas the largest state of the Union. 4 - In Exchange, the huge Texas' public debit, (the one built up before the annexation) would have been paid by the Federal Government. 5 - The slave trade had to be banned on Columbia district. As a compensation the Southerners were granted a more effective law that would better enable them the capture of the fugitive slaves and a solemn statement with which the Congress would reaffirm again that it had no power to interfere or intervene in the internal slave trade in being between the Southern States.

Answer 2

1. Slave trade was banned in Washington D.C.
2. California would be entered into the Union as a free state
3. Texas gave up claims to New Mexico (also the Missouri Comp. line) --
4. -- Hence allowing New Mexico and Utah to determine whether or not they should allow slavery through popular sovereignty
5. The Fugitive Slave Act had to be enforced in the North (If someone caught a run-away slave, they had to return them to their owner in the South)

Answer 3

The major terms of the Compromise of 1850 were based on one premise. New states would come into the Union in pairs. One state would be slaveholding and the other would be free.