In September of 1850, five bills were passed that altogether are known as the Compromise of 1850. California was entered as a free state, Utah and New Mexico were allowed to let the people of their states decide whether they would become a free state or a slave state, the slave trade was abolished in Washington D.C. and the Republic of Texas gave up lands that it claimed in present day New Mexico and received ten million dollars to pay its debt to Mexico. The last bill that was passed was the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. The Georgia Platform stated that unless the Compromise of 1850 was passed, Georgia would secede from the Union.
Slaves in the South were frequently escaping and running to the North to live there or go more North into Canada. The Fugitive Slave act was a law in the Constitution that required the return of runaway slaves. In 1850 it was enforced that if an official did not arrest a runaway slave, they could be fined $1,000 which as of 2011, would be $26,000.
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