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Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) When you look at a map such as the one below that includes dates of statehood and state boundaries. Keep in mind that in 1850 what would become the state of Oklahoma and much of Kansas and the eastern half of Nebraska were designated as Indian Territory. Many eastern and southeastern Indian peoples had already been forced to relocate there. In 1854 the Kansas-Nebraska Act reduced Indian Territory and in so doing reopened the slavery question in the territories.

From U.S. Bureau of the Census. Image provided by Perry-Castañeda

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Library Map Collection, University of Texas Libraries (http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/).

Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) Senator Stephen Douglas, Democrat from Illinois, championed this piece of legislation. Recognizing the increasingly important role of railroads in the nation's development and Chicago's status as a railroad hub, Douglas sought to help his home state (and increase the value of land he held an interest in) by proposing that a transcontinental rail line terminate in Chicago and pass through Indian Territory and the still unorganized portions of the Louisiana Purchase on its way to San Francisco. In supporting this route, Douglas advocated the organization of the territories of Nebraska and Kansas and thus reopened the slavery question. Southern Democrats supported Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska bill only when he agreed that popular sovereignty would decide the slavery question in the new territories. Because popular sovereignty could open the area north of 36°30' for slavery, the Kansas-Nebraska Act in effect repealed the Missouri Compromise.

Douglas assumed privately that neither Kansas nor Nebraska territories was suitable for slave agriculture and that both would enter the Union as free states, but the fact that his bill opened the possibility of slavery there caused over 300 anti-Nebraska rallies in the North, energized Free Soilers in the newly formed Republican Party, and caused the dissolution of the Whig Party because its southern members voted for the bill and northern members against it. Many northern Whigs joined the Republican Party and the Whig Party disappeared after it was unable to field a presidential candidate in 1856.

The tension mounted as the slavery issue inserted itself throughout the country from the furor over return of runaway slaves in northern states under the Fugitive Slave Law (part of the

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Compromise of 1850) to the opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it was in Kansas that the furor became bloody.

You may enjoy this interactive map provided by TeachingAmericanHistory.org because it tracks the admission of free and slave states from before the 1820 Missouri Compromise to the 1850s popular sovereignty era. Click on the "Start" button to begin. You may also click on each state/territory to see 1850 population numbers.

http://www.teachingamericanhistory.org/neh/interactives/sectionalism/lesson3/

©Susan Vetter 2011