Compromise of 1850 Themes

Let's be real: the Compromise of 1850 is all about slavery. It was motivated by slavery, it makes decisions about slavery, it includes laws about slavery. The whole thing started when California wa...

Seems like it's always about the Benjamins. The Compromise of 1850 doesn't address wealth in the most straightforward way, but it's in the background as a concern or motivation for a lot of its leg...

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....

Who's got the power: the federal government or the sovereign states? It's the signature argument of the antebellum era. The nation was adding new states like nobody's business, making it pretty cru...

Faced with massive amounts of new territory, the government had to find ways to organize and regulate those territories, who'd one day become new states. The senators writing the Compromise of 1850...