Did the Compromise of 1850 likely delay or quicken the US Civil War? In the long term, was it a good thing by abating tensions, or was it bad because it caused more division between the states or for any other reason?
It just quickened the Civil War. The addition of California in the Compromise of 1850 as a free state directly angered the balance between the Slave States and the Free States, and the South was basically denied to expand their influence of Slavery any further. This was basically the starting point in which the Slave States actually questioned being in the Union, however very opposite perspectives between north and south. It basically made the Slave States even more angry. Besides, in Kansas and Iowa, the North won both. The addition of California as a free state directly started the major unbalance between the Slave and Industrial States.