The Compromise of 1850 left the old Missouri Compromise line in place for the rest of the Louisiana Purchase. In 1854 Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois wanted to organize the land west of Missouri and Iowa, partly so a railroad to the Pacific could run through it. Southern senators would not agree unless slavery had a chance there.
Key idea
The Kansas-Nebraska Act (May 30, 1854) created Kansas and Nebraska territories and let their settlers vote on slavery (popular sovereignty), which repealed the Missouri Compromise line. Proslavery and antislavery settlers rushed in, and violence followed: "Bleeding Kansas." Opponents of slavery's spread founded the Republican Party (1854).
Why it works
Douglas believed popular sovereignty was the democratic answer: let the people who lived there decide. But in Kansas it turned the vote into a contest of numbers, and both sides sent settlers. On election day in 1855, thousands of armed Missourians crossed the border to vote, and a proslavery legislature was chosen; free-state settlers set up a rival government. Each side armed itself, and the territory had two governments at once.
Worked example: Violence spreads to Congress
In May 1856 three events came within a week. Put them in order and say why they mattered.
- May 21: a proslavery force sacked the free-state town of Lawrence, Kansas, burning a hotel and wrecking newspaper presses.
- May 22: in the Senate chamber, Representative Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane over a speech Sumner gave on "the Crime Against Kansas."
- May 24 to 25: the abolitionist John Brown and his followers killed five proslavery settlers near Pottawatomie Creek.
- Each side saw the other's violence as proof of its worst fears, and the national parties split further.
Answer: Lawrence, then Sumner, then Pottawatomie: violence in Kansas reached the floor of Congress.
Common mistake
The Republican Party was not founded to abolish slavery everywhere. Its founding goal was to stop slavery from spreading into the territories. It drew former Whigs, antislavery Democrats and Free Soilers; abolitionists were only one part. Check: "free soil" means keeping slavery out of new land, not ending it in the South.
The Whig Party broke apart over the act, and Northern Democrats lost heavily in the 1854 elections. About 56 of the territory's violent deaths in these years are usually linked to the fight over slavery.