Brattonsville

To what extent was reconstruction considered a failure?

Reconstruction after the Civil War in a way failed in many ways. First congress did not promote freedmen’s independence through land reforms; without property of their own, southern blacks lacked the economic power to defend their interest as free citizens. A second cause of Reconstruction’s collapse is less open to dispute; the federal government neglected to back congressional Reconstruction with military force.

The Compromise of 1850 was statehood for California; territorial status for Utah and New Mexico, allowing popular sovereignty; resolution of the Texas-New Mexico boundary disagreement; federal assumption of the Texas debt; abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia; and a new fugitive slave laws.

(WOW) That is a little bit more than what I know or can comprehend. Wikipedia says that the Compromise of 1850 was a series of bills aimed at resolving the territorial and slavery controversies arising from the Mexican-American War. There were five laws which balanced the interests of the slave states of the South and the free states to the north. California was admitted as a free state; Texas received financial return for giving up claim to lands west of the Rio Grande in what is now New Mexico; the Territory of New Mexico (including present-day Arizona and a portion of southern Nevada) was organized without any specific ban of slavery; the slave trade (but not slavery itself) was terminated in the District of Columbia; and the severe Fugitive Slave Law was passed, requiring all U.S. citizens to assist in the return of runaway slaves regardless of the legality of slavery in the specific states.