Wheaton was one of 600 people in Syracuse who signed a call for a meeting at the Syracuse City Hall on May 16, 1850, to discuss the proposed Compromise of 1850. Participants supported the admission of California as a free state, opposed territorial governments for New Mexico and Utah that did not prohibit slavery, opposed any fugitive slave law, and supported abolition of slavery in the national capital, stating, "We should rejoice to witness the removal of this stain in Washington, D.C. upon the national character." Despite much publicly stated opposition in the North, the southern slave states had enough votes in the US Congress to pass the Fugitive Slave Act.