First page of Senator Henry Clay's handwritten resolutions proposing the Compromise of 1850, January 29, 1850

National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate

Clay’s proposed resolutions called for the admission of California as a free state; the creation of new territories from the lands ceded by Mexico with the issue of slavery to be decided by their citizens; the settlement of a boundary dispute between New Mexico and Texas; a prohibition on the public sale of slaves in the District of Columbia, and the passage of a tough fugitive slave law that would make it easier for slave owners to recover slaves who had escaped to Northern states.