Quintus Ennius

What would have happened if the Compromise of 1850 never happened? Would the Civil War have happened a few years earlier? Would the North still have had an advantage against the South without the years of industrialization this allowed for the North?

Rongo

I personally think the Compromise of 1850 was one of the biggest mistakes in this country's history. It kicked the can of secession down the road another 10 years, and made sure that during those 10 years sectional hostility would increase to the point that a bloody civil war would result.

If the Compromise of 1850 had not been passed, it would have forced a showdown between the secessionists and the non-secessionists of the South. I think it's very possible the secessionists would have lost that showdown. Even if they won, it would only have been a few states that seceded. And I think the chances are pretty good that the secession would have been peaceful. There just was little appetite for war yet at this point.

So at worst you have a peaceful secession of a few of the Deep South states. After a few decades, slavery is abolished in the remaining United States, and the Confederacy becomes an international pariah, is forced to give up slavery, and begs to return to the Union.

tjadams

The North did use those ten years to lay a lot more train track than the Deep
South and ratchet up its industrial infrastructure.
I don't see the nation being torn by a civil war at this time. There was no
gauntlet throwing down by the Republican Party to challenge the Deep
South on slavery, the nation wasn't to the boiling point that it was when
Lincoln took office. There was no bolstering of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793,
no Uncle Tom's Cabin, no Kansas-Nebraska Act, no Bleeding Kansas,
no Dred Scott and no John Brown raid.
Some radical Deep South leaders would have complained, but I do not see
them getting the national support they were able to ten years later.