During 1849 some 80,000 gold seekers reached California, half of them Americans, and by 1854, the number would top 300,000. The "forty-niners" included people from every social class, every state and territory, including slaves brought by owners. .
The mining frontier was the most exceptional and unstable. Few miners were interested in permanent settlement. This provided an atmosphere of crime throughout the state. Women were rare, and the primary forms of entertainment were gambling and alcohol. .
Although Taylor wanted to give statehood to California and New Mexico, these two territories got ahead of him, and had free-states government in operation. On December 4, 1849, Taylor endorsed immediate statehood for California. .
In January 1850, Clay once again took the role of "Great Compromiser", and presented a package of eight resolutions that wrapped up solutions to all the disputed issues. He proposed to: admit California as a free state; organize the remainder of the Southwest without restriction to slavery; deny Texas its extreme claim to a Rio Grande boundary up to its source; compensate Texas for this by assuming the Texas debt; uphold slavery in the District of Columbia; abolish the slave trade across its boundaries; adopt a more effective fugitive slave act; and deny congressional authority to interfere with the interstate slave trade. This proposal became the Compromise of 1850. Calhoun addressed the senate, and later Daniel Webster did the same. Calhoun talked about the secession in the South, and Webster talked as an American, not a Massachusetts man. .
On July 4, 1850, Taylor went to the unfinished Washington Monument, heard all the speeches, and later back in the White House he had iced water and milk, ate some cherries, cucumbers, or cabbage, contracted cholera morbus, and five days later he was dead. Millard Fillmore assumed the presidency, and he wanted to seek peace between the south and the north.