USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -Popular sovereignty in New Mexico and Utah territories: Congress avoided a direct decision on the question of slavery in the new Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, employing the principle of popular sovereignty.

Detailed explanation-2: -A key provision of each of the laws respectively organizing the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah was that slavery would be decided by local option, called popular sovereignty.

Detailed explanation-3: -Texas, which already permitted slavery, naturally entered the Union as a slave state. But the California, New Mexico, and Utah territories did not have slavery.

Detailed explanation-4: -It had secured the type of fugitive slave law it had long demanded, and although California came in as a free state, it elected proslavery representatives. Moreover, New Mexico and Utah enacted slave codes, technically opening the territories to slavery.

Detailed explanation-5: -The acts called for the admission of California as a “free state, ” provided for a territorial government for Utah and New Mexico, established a boundary between Texas and the United States, called for the abolition of slave trade in Washington, DC, and amended the Fugitive Slave Act.