Kansas–Nebraska Act: Difference between revisions

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands for people, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed the settlers to decide whether or not to have slavery within those territories. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to create opportunities for a Midwestern Transcontinental Railroad. It was not problematic until popular sovereignty was written into the proposal. The new Republican Party, which

The act divided the region into the Kansas Territory (south of the 42nd parallel) and the Nebraska Territory (north of the 40th parallel).The most controversial provision was the stipulation that each territory would separately decide whether to allow slavery within its borders. This provision nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in any new states to be created north of latitude 36°30' since Kansas and Nebraska would be north of that line and could now choose to allow slavery.

Act orchestrator Stephen Douglas and private citizen Abraham Lincoln aired their disagreement over the Kansas Nebraska Act in three public speeches during September and October 1854.[1] The most comprehensive argument against the Act, the "Peoria Speech", was given by Lincoln in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16. [2] He and Douglas both spoke to the large audience, Douglas first and Lincoln in response two hours later. Lincoln's three hour speech [3], transcribed after the fact by Lincoln himself, presented thorough moral, legal and economic arguments against slavery, and set the stage for Lincoln’s political future[4].

Pro-slavery settlers came to Kansas mainly from neighboring Missouri. Their influence in territorial elections was often bolstered by resident Missourians who crossed into Kansas solely such a hostile environment for free-soilers that they set up their own unofficial legislature at Topeka.

John Brown and his sons gained notoriety in the fight against slavery by brutally murdering five pro-slavery farmers in the Pottawatomie Massacre with a broadsword. Brown also helped defend a few dozen free soil supporters from several hundred angry pro-slavery supporters at the town of Osawatomie.

Hostilities between the factions reached a state of low-intensity civil war, which was extremely embarrassing to Pierce, especially as the nascent Republican Party sought to capitalize on the scandal of Bleeding Kansas. Routine ballot-rigging and intimidation practiced by pro-slavery settlers failed to deter the immigration of anti-slavery settlers, who won a demographic victory in the race to populate the state.

The pro-slavery territorial legislature ultimately proposed a state constitution for approval by referendum. The constitution was offered in two alternative forms, neither of which made slavery illegal. Free Soil settlers boycotted the legislature's referendum and organized their own, which approved a free state constitution. The results of the competing referendums were sent to Washington by the territorial governor.

President James Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution (which allowed slavery, but disallowed import of new slaves) to Congress for approval. The Senate approved the admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton Constitution, despite the opposition of Senator Douglas, who believed that the Kansas referendum on the Constitution, by failing to offer the alternative of prohibiting slavery, was unfair. The measure was subsequently blocked in the United States House of Representatives, where northern congressmen refused to admit Kansas as a slave state. Senator James Hammond of South Carolina (famous for his "King Cotton" speech) The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided the nation and pointed it toward civil war. It is commonly acknowledged as the beginning of the Antebellum period of American history. The act itself virtually nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. The turmoil 29]], 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. Nebraska was admitted to the Union as a state after the Civil War in 1867.

• History of slavery in Nebraska
• Nebraska

• Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) online edition
• Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union. vol 2 (1947)
• Johannsen. Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (ISBN 0-19-501620-3)
• Nichols, Roy F. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September 1956): 187-212. Online at JSTOR at most academic libraries.
• Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976), Pulitzer prize winning scholarly history.
• SenGupta, Gunja. “Bleeding Kansas: A Review Essay.” Kansas History 24 (Winter 2001/2002): 318-341.
• Holt, Michael. "The Political Crisis of the 1850s." (1978)

• An annotated bibliography
• Kansas-Nebraska Act and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Printer-friendly transcript of the act