The Compromise of 1850 was a series of laws passed in 1850 that dealt with the controversial issue of slavery in the United States. As a result of the Mexican–American War, the United States acquired a great deal of new territory. The laws admitted California as a free state, and created the new territories of New Mexico and Utah. A dispute over the boundary between Texas and New Mexico was settled with Texas losing the New Mexico territory. It put an end to the slave trade in Washington, D.C. and made it easier for Southern slaveowners to recover runaway slaves. The compromise called for each new state to decide for itself whether it would be a slave or free state. This was called popular sovereignty, a term coined by Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 and later used in the Kansas–Nebraska Act.