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Kansas–Nebraska Act

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This 1854 map shows slave states (grey), free states (red), and US territories (green) with Kansas in center (white).

Overview

The availability of tens of millions of acres of excellent farm land made it necessary to create a territorial infrastructure to allow settlement. Railroad interests were especially eager to start operations, for they needed farmers as customers. Four previous attempts to pass legislation had failed. The solution was a bill proposed, in January 1854, by Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. He was the Democratic party leader in the Senate, the chairman of the Committee on Territories, an avid promoter of railroads, an aspirant to the presidency, and, above all, a fervent believer in popular sovereignty or grass roots democracy. His slogan was "Let the People Rule," which in this case meant the decision on having slavery would be made by the residents themselves. His bill caused a firestorm of opposition because it allowed slavery north of the line agreed upon in the Missouri Compromise, effectively repealing it. Even before the bill passed, a new grass roots opposition party was being organized in most northern states, the Republican Party. Northern Democrats, Southerners, and President Franklin Pierce supported the bill. Douglas used brilliant parliamentary maneuvers to get the bill passed on May 30, 1854. It was signed into law by Pierce; he was a "doughface" or northerner whose political support came mostly from the South. In effect, there were now three political positions in American politics, represented by Northern Democrats (led by Douglas), the Northern Republicans, and the Southern Democrats. In 1860, they would each run a candidate for president.

The act divided the region into the Kansas Territory (south of the 40th 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 This provision repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in any new states to be created north of latitude 36°30' since Kansas and Nebraska would be north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.

Douglas and the Act

Stephen Douglas was very interested in having a railroad extend through Chicago to the Pacific coast. However, many southerners wanted a railroad that would start in New Orleans and extend to southern California. Douglas decided to make a compromise with the southern senators. In exchange for having the railroad go through Chicago, he would introduce the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854. This act would take the area received from the Louisiana purchase and split it into the Kansas and Nebraska territories, where popular sovereignty would decide whether there would be slavery or not. The North was outraged by the bill, since it ignored and nullified the Missouri Compromise that said there could be no slavery north of the 36° 30" line. They organized protests and petitions. The South however, favored the idea that slavery could spread to the West and received strong Southern congressional support. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was also later the key issue in the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas Debates, along with the Dred Scott decision.

Fighting for control of Kansas

Settlers rushed into Kansas, and immediately started violent fights over slavery. At first, slavery supporters in Kansas outnumbered their opponents in Nebraska. Both pro- and anti-slavery supporters attempted to muster settlers of their own persuasion to settle in Kansas. The anti-slavery New England Emigrant Aid Company, headed by Amos Adams Lawrence, was highly successful in this project, and a nucleus of anti-slavery sentiment was established about the town of Lawrence, Kansas.

Pro-slavery settlers migrated to Kansas mainly from Missouri. Their influence in territorial elections was often bolstered by resident Missourians who crossed the border into Kansas purely for the purpose of voting in such ballots. They were called border ruffians by their opponents, a term coined by Horace Greeley. John Brown brought in his abolitionist supporters to fight them, and killed five farmers in the Pottawatomie Massacre. (It is interesting to note that many textbooks leave out the fact that several years before the Pottawattomie Massacre, John Brown helped defend a few dozen free soil supporters from several hundred pro-slavery supporters at the town of Ossawatomie.) The territorial capital of Lecompton, Kansas was the target of this agitation, and it consequently became such a hostile environment for free-soilers that they set up their own unofficial legislature at Topeka.

The 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. Successive territorial governors attempted to maintain the peace. They were usually sympathetic to slavery, but found themselves unable to countenance the routine ballot-rigging and intimidation that was practiced far more intensively by pro-slavery settlers as they lost the race to populate the territory.

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 D.C. by the territorial governor.

President James Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution 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 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) characterized this resolution as the expulsion of the state, asking, "If Kansas is driven out of the Union for being a slave state, can any Southern state remain within it with honor?"

Results

The Kansas-Nebraska Act split the nation and pointed it toward Civil War. The Act itself virtually nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. The turmoil over the act split both the Democratic and Know Nothing parties and gave rise to the Republican party that soon controlled most of the Northern states.

Eventually a new anti-slavery constitution was drawn up. On January 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.

See also

References

  • Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997)
  • Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union. 2 vols. (1947), the most detailed history.
  • Johannsen. Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (ISBN 0-19-501620-3), the standard biography
  • 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.
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