Kansas-Nebraska Act

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KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT

KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT of 1854 organized the northern Great Plains into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. It also repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery's expansion into the territories northwest of the border between the states of Arkansas and Missouri. Under the terms of the act, the residents of the Kansas and Nebraska territories would decide for themselves whether they would enter the Union as free or slave soil states. By repealing the Missouri Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act reopened the divisive issue of slavery's expansion and brought the United States closer to civil war.

After the passing of the Compromise of 1850, which settled the slavery issue in New Mexico and Utah, many Americans hoped that further controversy over slavery would be avoided. But it soon arose again, largely because of plans for building a transcontinental railroad to the Pacific coast. Because the settlement of the western territories depended upon the construction of a transcontinental railroad, the railroad's location took on tremendous importance. Naturally, northern congressmen advocated a northern route, while southern congressmen supported a southern route. The sectional debate over the railroad's path threatened to block its construction, until Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois entered the fray. An ardent supporter of western expansion and a tireless promoter of the Midwest's development, Douglas understood that a transcontinental railroad was indispensable for that region's political and economic future. Douglas also realized that if the transcontinental railroad took a northern route, Chicago would most likely serve as its eastern terminus. The resulting political and economic benefits that would accrue to Douglas's home state of Illinois were obvious. But Douglas also had national interests in mind. He genuinely believed that a populous and prosperous Midwest would be able to mediate sectional conflicts between North and South, and thus would promote sectional harmony and national unity.

Douglas recognized, however, that a transcontinental railroad running from Chicago to San Francisco would be possible only after the settlement of the vast midwestern lands between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River. Douglas thus introduced a bill to organize the land into the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, a move he believed would encourage settlers to migrate into the northern Great Plains.

In his effort to secure support for the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Douglas found an important ally in Missouri's influential senator, David R. Atchison, who was seeking reelection in 1854. Atchison's reelection campaign pitted him against Senator Thomas Hart Benton, a prominent opponent of slavery's westward expansion. Unlike Benton, Atchison was a staunch supporter of slavery's expansion, and he saw in the Kansas-Nebraska bill an opportunity to expand slavery's domain. Atchison promised Douglas that he would support the creation and settlement of the Kansas and Nebraska territories, but with one critical condition. He insisted that the Missouri Compromise be repealed so that his slaveholding constituents would be allowed to move into the new Kansas and Nebraska territories with their human property.

In an effort to mollify Atchison's concerns, Douglas introduced a bill for the territorial organization of Kansas and Nebraska, a bill that included a provision that effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise. The bill asserted that the Compromise of 1850 had superseded the 1820 principle that slavery would not be extended north and west of the Arkansas-Missouri state border. The bill also stated that the question of slavery in the territories should be settled by the people living in them, an idea known as popular sovereignty.

This language conveniently favored Atchison in his senatorial campaign, for it confronted his opponent, Thomas Hart Benton, with a difficult dilemma. If Benton voted for the bill, he would betray his antislavery sympathies; but if he voted against it, he would be defaulting on his promise to work for expansion into Kansas and Nebraska. He voted against the bill and suffered defeat in the race with Atchison. The final bill explicitly repealed the Missouri Compromise, and the possibility of slavery in the new territories was made real.

The political ramifications of the enactment of the Kansas-Nebraska bill reached deeply into the general political climate in which it was passed. Support for it from southern members of Congress was nearly unanimous. Northern Democrats were seriously split, half of their votes in the House going for the measure and half against it. Nearly all northern Whigs opposed the bill.

This severe political division fractured the structure of the political party system. The Whig Party was essentially destroyed in the South. The Democrats were so seriously divided that their tenuous congressional majority became highly vulnerable. A coalition of anti-Nebraska Democrats, northern Whigs, Know-Nothings, and nativist groups joined the newly organized Republican Party, making it a viable political force. By 1856 the Whigs had all but disappeared, and the Republican Party was able to confront the weakened Democrats with strong opposition.

In addition to these basic political changes, the Kansas-Nebraska Act had direct ramifications. Kansas and Nebraska were promptly opened for settlement in 1854. Although Nebraska remained relatively quiet, Kansas, the destination of most of the new settlers, became a political hotbed. Settlers came to Kansas not only to develop the frontier but also—and perhaps more importantly—to lend their weight in the determination of whether Kansas would be free or slave.

Almost from the outset, political stability was lacking in Kansas. From the South, proslavery Missourians traveled into Kansas to vote in favor of slavery, often arriving in armed bands. Groups in the North and East, such as the Emigrant Aid Company, helped so large a number of antislavery settlers move into the territory that it was generally thought that an honest referendum of actual settlers would not permit slavery in Kansas. But Missouri raiders entering the territory in great numbers made an honest count impossible. In 1855 a proslavery territorial legislature was established in the town of Lecompton, Kansas, while at the same time an antislavery legislature was established in Topeka. Almost inevitably, civil war erupted in Kansas as proslavery and antislavery forces clashed for control of the territory. Although bloody, the conflict remained inconclusive until the 1860s, when Kansas was finally admitted to the Union as a free soil state.

The violence and political chaos in Kansas not only presaged the Civil War but also helped to trigger it. In 1857 the proslavery territorial government in Lecompton presented to Congress a constitution that would have incorporated Kansas into the Union as a slave state. Chastened by the disastrous failure of his Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas led congressional opposition to the Lecompton constitution. Douglas and a diverse coalition of northern political factions in Congress narrowly managed to defeat Kansas's proposed admission to the Union as a slave state. The divisive battle over Lecompton, however, shattered the unity of the national Democratic Party, which in 1860 would divide into northern and southern wings. The collapse of the Democratic Party, the one remaining national party, set the stage for southern secession in 1860.