Beginning of Essay
The annexation of Texas to the United States and the gain of new territory by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican War (1848) aggravated the hostility between North and South concerning the question of the extension of slavery into the terri ....

Middle of Essay
.... to some, among them Henry Clay, who emerged from retirement to enter the Senate again. President Taylor was among those who felt that the Union was not threatened; he favored admission of California as a free state and encouragement of New Mexico to enter as a free state. These sentiments were voiced in Congress by William H. Seward. John C. Calhoun and other Southerners, particularly Jefferson Davis, maintained that the South should be given guarantees of equal position in the territories, of the execution of fugitive slave laws, and of protection against the abolitionists. Clay proposed that a series of measures be passed as an omnibus compromise bi ....