8. Why did southerners object to California’s admission as a free state? The southerners objected to California’s admission as a free state because it would destroy the delicate equilibrium in the senate, perhaps forever. Potential slave territory under the American flag was running short and agitation had already developed in the territories of New Mexico and Utah for admission as non-slave states. The fate of California might well establish a precedent for the rest of the Mexican Cession territory, an area purchased largely with Southern blood. 9. What did southerners start to demand in 1850 & why? In 1850, southerners started to demand a new and more stringent fugitive slave law because the old one, passed by Congress in 1793 had proved …show more content…
Seward. As a strong antislaveryite, he was against concession. He seemed not to realize that compromise had brought the Union together and that when the sections could no longer compromise, they would have to part company. Seward argued that Christian legislators must obey God’s moral law as well as man’s mundane law. He therefore appealed, with reference to excluding slavery in the territories, to an even “higher law’’ than the Constitution. This alarming phrase, may have cost him the presidential nomination and the presidency in 1860. 12. What happened to President Taylor & who replace him as President? At the height of the controversy in 1850, President Taylor unknowingly helped the cause of concession by dying suddenly, probably of an acute intestinal disorder. Vice President Millard Fillmore replaced him as President. 13. Describe the Compromise of 1850 & its component parts. The Compromise of 1850 are a set of bills proposed by Henry Clay regarding the status of the territory acquired in the Mexican American War. Clay urged that the North and South to both make concessions and that the North partially yield by enacting a more feasible fugitive-slave law. Concessions to the North: California admitted as a free state Territory disputed by Texas and New Mexico to be surrendered to New