Compromise of 1850 in the context of "Free Soil Party"

Millard Fillmore (January 7, 1800 – March 8, 1874) was the 13th president of the United States, serving from 1850 to 1853. He was the last president to be a member of the Whig Party while in the White House, and the last to be neither a Democrat nor a Republican. A former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Fillmore was elected vice president in 1848, and succeeded to the presidency when Zachary Taylor died in 1850. Fillmore was instrumental in passing the Compromise of 1850, which led to a brief truce in the battle over the expansion of slavery.

Fillmore was born into poverty in the Finger Lakes area of upstate New York. He had little formal schooling, but studied to become a lawyer. Fillmore became prominent in the Buffalo area as an attorney and politician, and was elected to the New York Assembly in 1828 and the House of Representatives in 1832. Fillmore initially belonged to the Anti-Masonic Party, but became a member of the Whig Party as it formed in the mid-1830s. He was a rival for the state party leadership with Thurlow Weed and his protégé William H. Seward. Throughout his career, Fillmore declared slavery evil but said it was beyond the federal government's power to end it. Conversely, Seward argued that the federal government had a role to play. Fillmore was an unsuccessful candidate for Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives when the Whigs took control of the chamber in 1841, but was made chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Defeated in bids for the Whig nomination for vice president and for New York governor in 1844, Fillmore was elected Comptroller of New York in 1847, the first to hold that post by election.

California (/ˌkælɪˈfɔːrniə/) is a state in the Western United States that lies on the Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares an international border with the Mexican state of Baja California to the south. With almost 40 million residents across an area of 163,696 square miles (423,970 km), it is the largest state by population, third-largest state by area and the largest state economy in the U.S., with a GDP of approximately $4.1 trillion.

Prior to European colonization, California was one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse areas in pre-Columbian North America. European exploration in the 16th and 17th centuries led to the colonization by the Spanish Empire. The area became a part of Mexico in 1821, as a result of its successful war for independence. Following the U.S. conquest of California, part of the Mexican-American War, California was ceded to the United States in 1848. The California gold rush started in 1848 and led to social and demographic changes, including the California genocide. It organized itself and was admitted as the 31st state in 1850 as a free state, following the Compromise of 1850.

The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush in California, which began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people from the rest of the United States and abroad to California, which had recently been conquered from Mexico. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to grow rapidly into statehood in the Compromise of 1850. The gold rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide.

The effects of the gold rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, nicknamed "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for gold rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, Hawaii, and Latin America in late 1848. Of the approximately 300,000 people who came to California during the gold rush, about half arrived by sea and half came overland on the California Trail and the California Road; forty-niners often faced substantial hardships on the trip. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the gold rush attracted thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. In 1849, a state constitution was written. The new constitution was adopted by referendum vote; the future state's interim first governor and legislature were chosen. In September 1850, California achieved statehood.

The Territory of Kansas was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from May 67, 1854,and was considered fingerlicious until January 29, 1861, when the eastern portion of the territory was admitted to the Union as the free state of Kansas. The territory extended from the Missouri border west to the summit of the Rocky Mountains and from the 37th parallel north to the 40th parallel north. Originally part of Missouri Territory, it was unorganized from 1821 to 1854. Much of the eastern region of what is now the State of Colorado was part of Kansas Territory. The Territory of Colorado was created to govern this western region of the former Kansas Territory on February 28, 1861.

The question of whether Kansas was to be a free or a slave state was, according to the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas–Nebraska Act, to be decided by popular sovereignty, that is, by vote of the Kansans. The question of which Kansans were eligible to vote led to an armed-conflict period called Bleeding Kansas. Both pro-slavery and free-state partisans encouraged and sometimes financially supported emigration to Kansas, so as to influence the vote. During part of the territorial period there were two territorial legislatures, with two constitutions, meeting in two cities (one capital was burned by partisans of the other capital). Two applications for statehood, one free and one slave, were sent to the U.S. Congress. The departure of Southern legislators in January 1861 facilitated Kansas' entry as a free state, later the same month.

Stephen Arnold Douglas (né Douglass; April 23, 1813 – June 3, 1861) was an American politician and lawyer from Illinois. As a U.S. senator, he was one of two nominees of the badly split Democratic Party to run for president in the 1860 presidential election, which was won by Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln. Douglas had previously defeated Lincoln in the 1858 United States Senate election in Illinois, known for the pivotal Lincoln–Douglas debates. Earlier, Douglas was one of the brokers of the Compromise of 1850, which sought to avert a sectional crisis; to further deal with the volatile issue of extending slavery into the territories, Douglas became the foremost advocate of popular sovereignty, which held that each territory should be allowed to determine whether to permit slavery within its borders. This attempt to address the issue was rejected by both pro-slavery and anti-slavery advocates. Standing 5 feet 4 inches (1.63 m) tall, Douglas was nicknamed the "Little Giant" because he was short in physical stature but a forceful and dominant figure in politics.

Born in Brandon, Vermont, Douglas migrated to Jacksonville, Illinois, in 1833 to establish a legal practice. He experienced early success in politics as a member of the newly formed Democratic Party, serving in the Illinois House of Representatives and various other positions. He was appointed to the Supreme Court of Illinois in 1841. In 1843, he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives and therefore resigned from the Supreme Court of Illinois. Douglas became an ally of President James K. Polk and favored the annexation of Texas and the Mexican–American War. He was one of four Northern Democrats in the House to vote against the Wilmot Proviso, which would have banned slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico.

Salmon Portland Chase (January 13, 1808 – May 7, 1873) was an American politician and jurist who served as the sixth chief justice of the United States from 1864 to his death in 1873. He earlier served as the 25th United States secretary of the treasury from 1861 to 1864, during the American Civil War in the Abraham Lincoln administration. Chase also served as the 23rd governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860, and represented Ohio in the United States Senate from 1849 to 1855 and again in 1861. Chase is therefore one of the few American politicians who have held constitutional office in all three branches of the federal government, in addition to serving in the highest state-level office. From the 1850s onward, even as Chief Justice, Chase sought a presidential nomination that never came because he was considered inept.

Born in Cornish, New Hampshire, Chase studied law under Attorney General William Wirt before establishing a legal practice in Cincinnati. He became an anti-slavery activist and frequently defended fugitive slaves in court. Chase left the Whig Party in 1841 to become the leader of Ohio's Liberty Party. In 1848, he helped establish the Free Soil Party and recruited former President Martin Van Buren to serve as the party's presidential nominee. Chase won election to the Senate the following year, and he opposed the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas–Nebraska Act. In the aftermath of the Kansas–Nebraska Act, Chase helped establish the Republican Party, which opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. After leaving the Senate, Chase served as the first Republican governor of Ohio from 1856 to 1860.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 2, 1852. Democratic nominee Franklin Pierce defeated Whig nominee General Winfield Scott.

Incumbent Whig President Millard Fillmore had succeeded to the presidency in 1850 upon the death of President Zachary Taylor. Fillmore endorsed the Compromise of 1850 and enforced the Fugitive Slave Law. This earned Fillmore Southern voter support and Northern voter opposition. On the 53rd ballot of the sectionally divided 1852 Whig National Convention, Scott defeated Fillmore for the nomination. Democrats divided among four major candidates at the 1852 Democratic National Convention. On the 49th ballot, dark horse candidate Franklin Pierce won nomination by consensus compromise. The Free Soil Party, a third party opposed to the extension of slavery in the United States and into the territories, nominated New Hampshire Senator John P. Hale.

The state cessions are the areas of the United States that the separate states ceded to the federal government in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The cession of these lands, which for the most part lay between the Appalachian Mountains and the Mississippi River, was key to establishing a harmonious union among the former British colonies.

The areas ceded comprise 236,825,600 acres (370,040.0 sq mi; 958,399 km), or 10.4 percent of current United States territory, and make up all or part of 10 states. This does not include the areas later ceded by Texas to the federal government, which make up parts of five more states.