The Compromise of 1850 was a series of five bills that addressed the issues around the spread of slavery to new territories added to the United States. The bills allowed California to join as a free state, established popular sovereignty in Utah and New Mexico to decide their status, adjusted the borders between Texas and New Mexico, abolished the slave trade in Washington D.C., and passed a stricter Fugitive Slave Act. The compromise was meant to balance northern free and southern slave interests to keep the country united.