Brief Summary
The Set-Up
California decided it wanted to become a state but didn't want to have slaves. Congress had to figure out how to do that without breaking the country.
The Text
The Compromise of 1850 gets a bunch of things done at once. Starting with Clay's original list of resolutions, the text includes a series of statues that each addresses one of those resolutions. It's like you get the table of contents, then the chapters.
- The first statute actually deals with Texas: its borders, its governmental structure, and how much the government is going to pay it to calm down about the aforementioned borders. The land taken away is made into New Mexico, which gets a territorial government.
- The next statute makes California a state. Simple enough.
- Then Utah gets a territorial government, with the exact same set-up as New Mexico.
- The last two statutes deal with slavery. First, there's a bill to strengthen the existing Fugitive Slave Act, which includes fun additions like harsher punishments, bigger rewards for slave-catchers, and punishments for people who won't hunt slaves.
- The final statute bans the slave trade in DC (not slavery, just selling and trading of human beings). This bunch o' bills was passed separately, but taken together form the Compromise of 1850.
TL;DR
In order to keep everyone just happy enough to not declare war on each other, the Compromise includes five separate bills mostly about slavery, which together deal with a bunch of state governments, runaway slaves, and the slave trade in the nation's capital.