The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opening new lands for settlement, and had the effect of repealing the Missouri Compromise of 1820 by allowing settlers in those territories to determine through Popular Sovereignty whether they would allow slavery within each territory. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and make feasible a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad.
Terms : Hide Images
| 399546926 | 1 | The Kansas-Nebraska bill exposed the conflicting interpretations of popular sovereignty. Douglas' bill left "all questions pertaining to slavery in the Territories...to the people residing therein." Northerners and southerners, however, still disagreed violently over what territorials settlers could constitutionally do... | |
| 399546927 | 2 | Moreover, the Kansas and Nebraska territories lay north of latitude 36°30', where the Missouri Compromise prohibited slavery. Thus, if popular sovereignty were to mean anything in Kansas and Nebraska, it had to mean that the Missouri Compromise was no longer in effect and that settlers could establish slavery there. | |
| 399546928 | 3 | Southern congressmen, anxious to establish slaveholders' right to take slaves into any territory, demanded an explicit repeal of the 36°30' limitation as the price of their support. | |
| 399546929 | 4 | Douglas' bill thus threw open to slavery land from which it had been prohibited for 34 years. Opposition from Free-Soilers (those who opposed expansion of slavery into the western territories) and antislavery forces was immediate and enduring... | |
| 399546930 | 5 | Douglas eventually prevailed: the bill became law in May 1854 by a vote that demonstrated the dangerous sectionalization of American politics. | |
| 399550323 | 6 | In summary, the Act had two unexpected results. Dropping the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (which said slavery would never be allowed in Kansas) was a major boost for the expansion of slavery. Overnight outrage united anti-slavery forces across the North into an "anti-Nebraska" movement that soon was institutionalized as the Republican Party, with its firm commitment to stop the expansion of slavery. Second, pro- and anti-slavery elements moved into Kansas with the intention of voting slavery up or down, leading to a raging civil war known as "Bleeding Kansas. |
