Congressional Globe Containing the Debates and Proceedings of the First [AND] Second Sessions of the Thirty-First Congress (3 volume set)

United States Congress; Henry Clay

John C. Rives; Congressional Globe Office, Washington [D.C.], 1850

[Congressional Debates on Slavery and the Compromise of 1850] 1st Session; 31st Congress; December 3, 1849 to September 30, 1850 (Parts 1 & 2); 2nd Session; 31st Congress; December 2, 1850 to March 3, 1851.  3 volume set.   Quartos. Bound in contemporary 3/4 leather over marbled boards.  Leather cracked at hinges cracked.  Bindings poor. Pages are generally clean and unmarked. 

 Includes important legislation on slavery: the Compromise of 1850, The Fugitive Slave Act, and "An Act to suppress the Slave Trade in the District of Columbia."   Includes the admission of California as a state, the organization of New Mexico and Utah territories, and the revision of Texas's borders.  The unprecedented land gains from the Mexican American War created severe divisions in America of the question of the future of slavery in the new territories.  Henry Clay masterminded this compromise which kept the Union from descending into conflict a decade before the Civil War.