Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 played a large role in bringing about the American Civil War (1861–65). Within a year of its passage, proslavery and antislavery settlers were at war in Kansas —a confrontation known as “Bleeding Kansas”—and the nation's political parties had turned from positions of compromise to outright opposition.

Long-term slavery issue

For more than thirty years prior to the act's passage, the federal government had been looking for a solution to the conflict between those who wanted slavery to expand into new U.S. territories and those who wanted to see the abolition (elimination) of, or at least a limit on, slavery. The first serious attempt to resolve the issue was the Compromise of 1820, also called the Missouri Compromise , which allowed Missouri to join the Union as a slave state and Maine to come in as a free (nonslave) state, while providing that no more slave states could be created north of Missouri's southern boundary (36 degrees; 30 minutes latitude). Under the Missouri Compromise, an uncertain peace was maintained for nearly three decades.

The peace was disrupted at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846–48) when the United States won California , Arizona , and New Mexico —territory south of the Missouri Compromise line, but not specifically covered under the compromise. Congress then enacted the Compromise of 1850 , which admitted states to the Union in slave state/ free-state pairs to maintain the balance. Most northerners wanted to keep slavery out of the western territories. With a flood of settlers in the early 1850s heading to the territory west of Missouri known as Nebraska (comprised of present-day Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota , and South Dakota ), there was an urgent need for a plan.

Stephen Douglas's proposal

Had the issue of slavery in the territories followed a strict sectional (North/South) vote, the North would have kept slavery out of the new territories. But by 1854, the Democratic Party controlled the national government, and southerners controlled the party. Northern Democrats with political ambitions, such as U.S. senator Stephen A. Douglas (1813–1861) of Illinois , tried to avoid any conflict over slavery and, when pushed, often sided with the South. In 1854, Douglas's main interest was neither slavery nor the settlement of the Nebraska Territory. Douglas wanted to get federal support for a transcontinental railroad (one that traveled across the continent) that would begin in his hometown of Chicago and end in San Francisco, California. To get congressional support, he needed strong ties with the southern branch of his party.

In the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas proposed to split the Nebraska Territory into two states: Kansas, the area west of Missouri; and Nebraska, the land west of Minnesota and Iowa . His proposal pleased southerners because in its final form it repealed the Missouri Compromise (which would have kept slavery out of both states). Douglas argued that sectional conflict between the North and the South over slavery could be avoided by adopting a policy he called “popular sovereignty,” which allowed the citizens of each territory to decide whether slavery could exist in their areas. After months of fierce debate in both houses of Congress, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was signed into law on May 30, 1854.

Northerners were so greatly angered by the Kansas-Nebraska Act that most left the Democratic Party and formed the new Republican Party . In creating this party, “free” Democrats and former members of the Whig Party and Free Soil Party buried their differences, uniting around their opposition to the expansion of slavery in the West. In the state, local, and congressional elections of 1854 and 1855, the new party swept Democrats out of office throughout the North. Although compromise had been central to the political parties for decades, after 1854 the two major parties, the Republicans and the Democrats, were nearly totally opposed to one another over the issue of slavery.

Bloody Kansas

As a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, armed settlers rushed into Kansas Territory from the North and South, hoping to influence the territorial votes on slavery. By 1855, Kansas was in a state of violent chaos as southerners and northerners competed for land and resources. In 1856, violence erupted in response to massive vote fraud by southerners entering the territory to vote for a proslavery government. In May 1856, proslavery ruffians attacked the Free-Soil town of Lawrence, Kansas, destroying much of it. In retaliation, men under the command of John Brown (1800–1859), an Ohio abolitionist, killed a group of proslavery settlers. By the summer of 1856, the territory was caught in a small civil war.

A new territorial governor restored order in late 1856, but the conflict continued to smolder in the territory. In 1858, President James Buchanan (1791–1868; served 1857–61) tried to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave state, to the outrage of most northerners. The attempt failed, and in January 1861, on the eve of the Civil War, Kansas entered the Union as a free state.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act failed to accomplish the goals of its author and its supporters: Douglas's transcontinental railroad had to wait until after the Civil War, and southerners did not get a new slave state in Kansas. Instead, the act prompted massive violence in the territory and helped create a new political party wholly dedicated to preventing slavery from spreading to the new territories. Though it was not the intention of its authors, the Kansas-Nebraska Act helped push the nation into civil war.