civil war

The vast territory gained in Mexican War raised new questions about slavery and intensified sectionalism. To solve the slavery problem, Henry Clay proposed the Compromise of 1850, hoping to avoid the civil war and disunion. Although the compromise delayed the Civil War for eleven years, it ultimately failed to prevent the war from happening. The Compromise of 1850 was successful in the sense that it solved some impending crises, thus delayed the outbreak of war. On the …

…solved some immediate problems such as the admission of California as a free state and settled the dispute in Texas. It also indirectly saved the Union by delaying the war until the North was strong enough to fight. But it failed to settle the slave issue once and for all as it was expected to do. In fact, nothing could prevent the war because the Union “could not endure permanently half slave and half free.”