Events
1854
Congress passes Kansas-Nebraska Act
Republican Party forms
1856
Border ruffians burn the town of Lawrence, Kansas
Pottawatomie MassacreCharles Sumner attacked in the SenateJames Buchanan elected president
Key People
-
John Brown
Violent
radical abolitionist involved in the Pottawatomie Massacre and Harpers
Ferry Raid
-
James Buchanan
15th
U.S. president; pro-Southern Democrat
-
Stephen Douglas
Democratic senator from Illinois; pushed the Kansas-Nebraska
Act through Congress
-
John Frémont
Mexican
War hero; first presidential candidate for the new Republican Party
The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, hoping
to lure transcontinental railroad developers away from lands acquired
via the Gadsden Purchase, proposed instead to build
the line farther north, so that the railway would end in Chicago
and give his home region a huge economic boost. But federal law
required that the vast unorganized areas in the middle of the country
first be carved into official territories before any track could
be laid.
To do so, Douglas rammed the Kansas-Nebraska
Act through Congress in 1854 to
create two new territories—Kansas in the South and Nebraska in the
North. According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820,
both territories would have to be free because they were north of
the 36˚ 30'
line. But Douglas, aware that Southern legislatures would never
approve two new free territories, declared instead that popular
sovereignty would determine whether Kansas and
Nebraska would be free or slave. In doing so, he hoped to strengthen
his bid for the presidency in 1856 by
winning support from Southern Democrats.
Backlash Against the Kansas-Nebraska Act
Because popular sovereignty had worked in the Compromise
of 1850,
Douglas assumed that the doctrine would work in the unorganized
territories as well. Privately, he believed that slavery would never
take hold in Kansas and Nebraska because the terrain was unsuitable
for producing cotton. Popular sovereignty, then, was merely a carrot
to appease the South. Douglas thus figured the act would please
both the abolitionists in the North and slave owners in the South,
bring development to Chicago, and increase his chances
for the party’s nomination in 1856 without
really changing anything.
But Douglas’s plan backfired. Southerners—Democrats and Whigs
alike—jumped at the opportunity to open Northern territories to
slavery, but Northerners recoiled, outraged that the Missouri Compromise
had been violated. Riots and protests against the Kansas-Nebraska
Act erupted in Northern cities.
Growing Antislavery Sentiments in the North
What Douglas had failed to realize was that most Northerners regarded
the Missouri Compromise to be almost sacred. The publication of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin and the brutal enforcement of the Fugitive Slave
Act had by this time awakened hundreds of thousands
in the North to the horrors of slavery. Even those who benefited
from Southern slavery, such as textile manufacturers, did not wish
to see slavery expand further west or north. The Kansas-Nebraska
Act succeeded only in shifting Northern public opinion even further away
from reconciliation with the South.
The End of the Whig Party
The Kansas-Nebraska Act also caused the collapse of both
the Whig and Democratic parties. The parties split according to
section: to pass the act through Congress, Southern Whigs voted
with Southern Democrats against their Northern counterparts for
the first time in history. The Whigs were never able to reunite
after this catastrophic divide. The Democrats survived, but Northern
Democrats lost over half their seats in Congress that year.
