Aggravating or Ameliorating the Slavery Issue

The Compromise of 1850 ameliorated the slavery issue because it satisfied the South by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which made the abolitionist Northerners return the runaway slaves to their rightful masters. The North received the ban of slave trade in Washington DC. Both sides of the argument, North and the South, compromised on New Mexico and Utah, which did not become slave or free states. The North also received California as a free state and the South received compensation for lost Texan territory to NM and UT. This compromise provided for all the sides of the slavery issue to be happy and it set peace between the two sections for a decade. The Kansas Nebraska Act, however, aggravated the slavery issue because the sectional balance was off due to popular sovereignty, which decided that all the disputes territories would be slave states, and made the North aggravated, since popular sovereignty never worked in their favor. The Missouri Compromise of 1821 ameliorated the slavery issue because temporarily, the South was content with the sectional balance that the compromise provided, the 36’30’ division line between free and slave states. After the passage of the compromise, the sectional balance was restored since MO was added to the Union as a slave state as Maine was added as a free state.