<Li> Changing Texas's borders was proposed by Senator Thomas Hart Benton in December 1849 or January 1850 . Texas's western and northern boundaries would be the 102nd meridian west and the 34th parallel north . </Li> <Li> Two southern states were proposed by Senator John Bell, with the assent of Texas, in February 1850 . New Mexico would get all Texas land north of the 34th parallel north, including today's Texas Panhandle, while the area to the south, including the southeastern part of today's New Mexico, would be divided at the Colorado River of Texas into two Southern states, balancing the admission of California and New Mexico as free states . </Li> <Li> The first draft of the compromise of 1850 had Texas's northwestern boundary be a straight, diagonal line from the Rio Grande 20 miles north of El Paso to the Red River (Mississippi watershed) at the 100th meridian west, the southwestern corner of today's Oklahoma . </Li> <P> On January 29, 1850, Whig Senator Henry Clay gave a speech for compromise on the issues dividing the Union . However, Clay's specific proposals for achieving a compromise, including his idea for Texas's boundary, were not adopted in a single bill . Upon Clay's urging, Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, divided Clay's bill into several smaller bills and passed each separately . When he instructed Douglas, Clay was nearly dead and unable to guide the congressional debate any further . The Compromise came to coalesce around a plan dividing Texas at its present - day boundaries, creating territorial governments with "popular sovereignty", without the Wilmot Proviso, for New Mexico and Utah, admitting California as a free state, abolishing the slave trade in the District of Columbia, and enacting a new fugitive slave law . </P>

The compromise of 1850 allowed certain territories to use popular sovereignty