What was the Kansas-Nebraska Act? When was it signed and what did it do to the Missouri Compromise?

Constabulary Summary:

• Appointment signed into police force: May 30, 1854
• Main proponent: U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois
• Signed into police force by: President Franklin Pierce
• Results: recognition of Kansas and Nebraska equally organized U.South. territories; pop sovereignty; expansion of the Republican Political party; "Haemorrhage Kansas;" the American Civil State of war

In 1854, amidst sectional tension over the future of slavery in the Western territories, Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Human action, which he believed would serve equally a concluding compromise measure. Through the invocation of popular sovereignty, Douglas's proposal would allow the citizens of the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, rather than the federal authorities, to decide whether to permit or prohibit slavery inside their borders.

In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, pro- and antislavery forces descended on Kansas, followed by an burst of violence and intimidation.

In response to the Kansas-Nebraska Human action, pro- and antislavery forces descended on Kansas, followed past an outburst of violence and intimidation. Dissent in the North and West was then profound that the antislavery Republican Party formed even before the police'south enactment and apace peeled Northern, antislavery members away from the Autonomous, Whig, and Free-Soil Parties, with the latter two parties formally dissolving past the terminate of 1854 and 1860, respectively.

During the 1840s, the push button to organize the Kansas and Nebraska Territories was inspired by the prospects of a Transcontinental Railroad and Western settlement. The trouble of determining the railway'southward route—whether information technology would pass through northern (gratuitous) or southern (slave) territory—was hotly debated and prevented any construction. For proslavery politicians such equally Missouri Senator David Rice Atchison, the primary deterrent to a Northern route was the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery due north of Missouri'south southern border at the 36°30' parallel.

Without the support of slave-state Senators, the likelihood of completing the railroad remained very low. Hoping to span the divide, Stephen Douglas stepped in and argued that the rule of popular sovereignty that had finer been implemented in the Compromise of 1850 in the Utah and New Mexico Territories should besides apply to Kansas and Nebraska. Douglas besides had personal and financial reasons for securing a Northern route, which he believed would run through his abode state of Illinois and more specifically through the urban center of Chicago, where he had heavily invested in real estate. In an effort to further gratify Southern politicians and win their votes, Douglas worked behind the scenes to ensure that the Missouri Compromise line was formally repealed.

Opponents of the law expressed outrage over the dismissal of the Missouri Compromise and accused Douglas of submitting to the slave power. "Anti-Nebraska" organizations rapidly materialized throughout the North and Midwest every bit the cause of gratis soil united disparate groups around the central premise of preventing the western expansion of slavery.

Seeking to leverage the principles of Popular Sovereignty, immigration aid societies in both the N and South encouraged settlement in Kansas, where two opposing territorial governments and constitutions formed as a localized civil state of war exploded. Military-minded combatants included and then-called "border ruffians," proslavery Missourians who felt deeply threatened by the possibility of a Free-State on their Western border, in add-on to Iowa to the north and Illinois to the East. Border ruffians fought bitterly with Gratuitous-State "jayhawkers" and both carried out tearing raids and committed massive voter-fraud, leading to national headlines describing "Haemorrhage Kansas" as the epicenter of America's exclusive divide.

The fiery abolitionist John Chocolate-brown arrived in Kansas in 1855, bringing with him an interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act as a divine phone call to arms.

The peppery abolitionist John Dark-brown arrived in Kansas in 1855, bringing with him an interpretation of the Kansas-Nebraska Human activity as a divine call to artillery, and his acts of assailment against Missouri slave owners came to characterize the violence along the edge. Past 1856, political antagonisms over the Kansas-Nebraska Act only intensified in the halls of Congress, culminating in the caning of Senator Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks, a Congressman from South Carolina. Instead of denouncing Brooks'southward tearing deportment, which might have eased the national divide, inspired Southerners sent Brooks hundreds of canes as a sign of solidarity.

Another consequence of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was the usurpation of longstanding party affiliations according to sectional loyalties. The cause of free soil over the interest of slavery led many Northern, antislavery Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Democrats to carelessness their traditional party affiliations and join the new Republican Political party in 1854. In the 1856 election, the Republicans produced their start presidential candidate, John C. Frémont, who represented solely Northern interests. Despite a losing entrada, Frémont managed to win over a substantial number of voters.

Combined with the admittance of Kansas into the Marriage as a free state in January 1861, the election of Republican Abraham Lincoln in 1860 represented a major defeat for Stephen Douglas and the hope that pop sovereignty would preclude a consummate breakdown of national politics forth sectional lines. In a bitter ironic twist, rather than achieving a lasting compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act ultimately divided the nation and led it further down the path to civil war.

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Source: https://civilwaronthewesternborder.org/encyclopedia/kansas-nebraska-act

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