Thomas Hart Benton, nicknamed "Old Bullion", was an American politician, attorney, soldier, and longtime United States Senator from Missouri. A member of the Democratic Party, he was an architect and champion of westward expansion by the United States, a cause that became known as Manifest Destiny. Benton served in the Senate from 1821 to 1851, becoming the first member of that body to serve five terms.

The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that temporarily defused tensions between slave and free states in the years leading up to the American Civil War. Designed by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas, with the support of President Millard Fillmore, the compromise centered on how to handle slavery in recently acquired territories from the Mexican–American War (1846–48).approved California's request to enter the Union as a free state strengthened fugitive slave laws with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. defined northern and western borders for Texas while establishing a territorial government for the Territory of New Mexico, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be free or slave established a territorial government for the Territory of Utah, with no restrictions on whether any future state from this territory would be free or slave