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How did the slavery question affect the admission of new states to the Union?

During the mid-1800s in the United States, there was a growing division between free (nonslave-owning) industrial states in the North and slave-owning agricultural states in the South. The federal government could not resolve the growing conflict over slavery (the buying and selling of Africans for use as slave laborers), so instead efforts were made to maintain a balance between the North and the South.

The issue became especially critical after the Mexican War (1846–48), in which the United States defeated Mexico and won control of Texas and territories in the West. The U.S. Congress (the country's law-making body) was faced with deciding whether slavery should be extended into this region. Lawmakers arrived at the Compromise of 1850, which allowed Texas to be admitted to the Union as a slave state and California to...

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