1851 Millard Filmore - Compromise of 1850

In 1849, there were many issues dividing the nation. Should California be a 'free state', would Texas take over New Mexico (and increase slave territory) . The question of slavery was tearing the union apart. Henry Clay of Kentucky viewed this as a crisis and proposed a compromise. Taylor's death ushered in the presidency of Millard Fillmore. Fillmore, thinking it best to preserve the union, chose to accept the compromise. California would become a free state, territorial governments would be established in Utah and New Mexico with the right to choose to be slave or free based upon the will of the people or 'popular sovereignty'.  Also, the south would get their 'fugitive slave act', and slave trade would be ended in Washington D.C. Crisis was averted, but the question on slavery was not answered, and those on either extreme side of the issue of slavery became even more bitter.
Fillmore expressed his opinion on the issue in 1851,

  "in reference to the agitation growing out of the Territorial and slavery questions as a final settlement in principle and substance of the dangerous and exciting subjects which they embraced, and I recommended adherence to the adjustment established by those measures until time and experience should demonstrate the necessity of further legislation to guard against evasion or abuse. I was not induced to make this recommendation because I thought those measures perfect, for no human legislation can be perfect."

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29492
 http://series.c-span.org/History/Events/The-Compromise-of-1850/10737433414/

Do you think Abraham Lincoln would have signed the compromise?  It would have been a heated debate among his cabinet.   His secretary of State, William Henry Seward was  an abolitionist who supported compromise.  Lincoln himself would do whatever it took to preserve the Union.   Many others in the republican party though, were furious at the thought of any compromise.