struggle+to+compromise.-ch

Struggle to compromise
With the Gold rush happening in California, government officials wanted to make it a state to control the whole mining scene. The north had 15 free states and the south had 15 slave states and if California joined the US, southerners feared that this would lead to limits on slavery. Some southern government officials even talked about taking their states out of the union. Henry clay came up with a compromise that would allow California to enter the union and still have slavery in the south. President Taylor opposed the bill but soon he died of cholera. The new president, Millard Fillmore, passed the bill in 1850. The bill said that California would become a free state and prohibited congress to interfere with the domestic slave trade and have a stronger law to help Southerners catch runaway slaves.