If you've ever had to set up a government (and who hasn't in this day and age), then you know that you have to define who has power and how much. The balance of power: it's a pretty crucial detail. From the nation's founding, the government was always careful to have about the same number of slave and free states. So whenever the nation acquired new territory, that balance had to somehow be restored.
The Compromise of 1850 establishes or adjusts the government of four states to maintain this delicate power balance. The Fugitive Slave Act that's part of the Compromise also includes some new powers for very specific (and, ISHO scary) purposes.
The other balance of power that the compromise tried to navigate was that between the federal government and the states. The Constitution said that, unless it explicitly assigned a power to the feds, it belonged to the states. Arguments over that started in 1776 and didn't end until…well, they never ended.
Questions About Power
- Why was it necessary to outline the power structures of the new territories?
- How did Congress distribute power between the federal and the state governments? What power did they give and what did they keep for themselves?
- What does the final Compromise legislation indicate about how people generally interpreted the powers of the federal government in 1850?
- Why was it so important to have a balance of free and slave states?
Chew on This
If the people of any given states wanted to have slavery, or a sales tax, or a toxic waste dump, the feds had no right to deny the people's wishes.
The whole states' rights argument was just an excuse to own slaves.