Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT (1854)

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the one piece of legislation most responsible for bringing about the American Civil War (1861–1865). Within a year of the passage of the act, free-soil settlers and pro-slavery advocates were at war in Kansas—a confrontation known in the press as "Bleeding Kansas". That conflict continued throughout the Civil War, resulting in the death of hundreds of settlers and the destruction of thousands of dollars of property.

The federal government had been looking for a general solution to the conflict between those who wanted to see an expansion of slavery and those who wanted to see the abolition of slavery. The first serious attempt to resolve the issue was the Compromise of 1820, or the Missouri Compromise. This solution would have Missouri join the union as a slave state, while Maine would come in as a wage-labor state. Finally, no more slave states could be created north of Missouri's southern boundary (36 degrees; 30 minutes latitude). The slavery issue reemerged after the Mexican War (1846–1848), in which the United States won California, Arizona, and New Mexico—territory south of the Missouri Compromise line, but not specifically covered under the Compromise. The Compromise of 1850 tried to patch together a solution by admitting slave states and free states to the Union in pairs and passing a stronger federal fugitive slave law, among other items. By 1854, however, the flood of settlers heading west to the Nebraska territory exposed the failure of the Compromise and brought the slavery issue before Congress once again.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the brainchild of Senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861), a Democrat from Illinois. Douglas proposed to split the Nebraska Territory into two states, Kansas and Nebraska, and to repeal the Missouri Compromise (which would have kept slavery out of both states). Douglas believed that sectional conflict between the North and the South over slavery could be avoided by adopting a policy he called "popular sovereignty." Popular Sovereignty had been suggested by Michigan Senator Lewis Cass. It allowed the citizens of each territory to decide by referendum whether slavery could exist in their areas. Although the concept was fair in principle, it was very easy to abuse. Of the first three elections for congressional representatives in Kansas (each of which resulted in a pro-slavery victory) congressional examinations later found all of them to be fraudulent.

Instead of bringing the North and South closer together, Douglas's bill widened the gap between North and South. Many northern voters regarded his Kansas-Nebraska Act as a betrayal of their key principles of free soil and free labor. The Democratic Party now had very little appeal in the North. It became the party of the South and the party of slavery. The Democratic Party lost control of most free-state legislatures in the elections of 1854 while Free-Soilers, Whigs, and other opposition parties gained representation.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act drove the nation closer to secession. Organizations such as the New England Emigrant Aid Company were formed to promote free-labor settlement in Kansas. Among the provisions that they donated to the free labor forces in Kansas were rifles. Southerners responded with their own organizations, led by public figures like Senator David Atchison of Missouri, to intimidate the anti-slave forces and to insure a pro-slavery population in the territories. The end result of this process was the outbreak of civil war and the eventual admission of Kansas to the Union as a free state on January 29, 1861.

See also: Bleeding Kansas, Civil War (Economic Causes of)

FURTHER READING

Brown, Thomas J. "Franklin Pierce's Land Grant Veto and the Kansas-Nebraska Session of Congress," Civil War History, 42:2, 1996.

Johannsen, Robert Walter. The Frontier, the Union, and Stephen A. Douglas. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989.

Johannsen, Robert Walter. Stephen A. Douglas. Illini Books Edition. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988.

Wolff, Gerald W. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Revisionist Press, 1977.