Kansas–Nebraska Act

This 1856 map shows slave states (gray), free states (pink), and US territories (green) with Kansas in center (white).

In United States history, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to create opportunities for a Mideastern Transcontinental Railroad. It was not problematic until popular sovereignty was written into the proposal. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois.

The act established that settlers could vote to decide whether to allow slavery, in the name of "popular sovereignty" or rule of the people. Douglas hoped it would ease relations in both North and South, because the South could expand slavery to new territories but the North still had the right to abolish slavery in their states. He was wrong. Opponents denounced the law as a concession to the slave power of the South. The new Republican Party, which was created in opposition to the act, aimed to stop the expansion of slavery, and soon emerged as the dominant force throughout the North.

Background

Since early in the 1840s the topic of a transcontinental railroad had been discussed. While there were debates over the specifics, especially the route to be taken, there was a public consensus that such a railroad should be built by private interests financed by public land grants. In 1845 Stephen Douglas, serving in his first term in the United States House of Representatives, submitted an unsuccessful plan to formally organize the Nebraska Territory as the first step in building a railroad with its eastern terminal in Chicago. Railroad proposals would be submitted and debated in all subsequent sessions of Congress with cities such as Chicago, St. Louis, Quincy, Memphis, and New Orleans competing to be the jumping off point for the Im the best ever Hellz Yea!!!!!!construction.

Several proposals in late 1852 and early 1853 had strong support, but in the end they failed because of disputes over whether the railroad would follow a northern or a southern route. In early 1853 the House of Representatives passed a bill by an 107 to 49 vote that organized the Nebraska Territory in land west of Iowa and Missouri. In March the bill moved to the Senate Committee on Territories which was now headed by Senator Douglas. Missouri Senator David Atchison announced that he would support the Nebraska proposal only if slaveholders were not banned from the new territory. While the bill was silent on this issue, slavery would have been prohibited under the terms of the Missouri Compromise. Other southern senators were not as flexible as Atchison. By a vote of 23 to 17 the Senate voted to table the motion with every senator from states south of Missouri voting for the tabling.

During the senate adjournment the issues of the railroad and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise became entangled in Missouri politics as Atchison campaigned for reelection against the forces of Thomas Hart Benton. Atchison was maneuvered into choosing between antagonizing the state railroad interests or the state slaveholders. Finally Atchison took the position that he would rather see Nebraska “sink in hell” before he would allow it to be overrun by free-soilers.

In this era, congressmen generally found lodging in boarding houses when they were in the nation’s capital performing their legislative duties. Atchison shared lodgings on an F Street house shared by the leading southerners in Congress. Atchison himself was the Senate’s president pro tempore, and his housemates included Robert T. Hunter (chairman of the Finance Committee from Virginia), James Mason (chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee from Virginia), and Andrew P. Butler (chairman of the Judiciary Committee from South Carolina). When Congress reconvened on December 5, 1853, this group, termed the “F Street Mess”, along with Virginian William O. Goode, formed the nucleus that would insist on slaveholder equality in Nebraska. Douglas was aware of their opinions and their power and knew that he needed to address their concerns.

Iowa’s Senator Augustus C. Dodge immediately reintroduced the same legislation to organize Nebraska that had stalled in the previous session, and it was referred to Douglas’ committee on December 14. Douglas, hoping to achieve the support of the southerners, publicly announced that the same principle that had been established in the Compromise of 1850 should apply in Nebraska. In the Compromise of 1850, Utah and New Mexico Territory had been organized without any restrictions on slavery, and many supporters of Douglas argued that this compromise had already superseded the Missouri Compromise. These territories, however, unlike Nebraska, had never been part of the Louisiana Purchase and had never been subject to the Missouri Compromise.

Congressional action

Introduction of the Nebraska bill

Stephen A. Douglas -- "The great principle of self government is at stake, and surely the people of this country are never going to decide that the principle upon which our whole republican system rests is vicious and wrong."

The bill was reported to the main body of the Senate on January 4, 1854. The bill had been significantly modified by Douglas, who had also authored the New Mexico and Utah territorial acts, to mirror the language from the Compromise of 1850. In the new bill the territory of Nebraska was extended north all the way to the forty-ninth parallel, and any decisions on slavery were to be made "when admitted as a state or states, the said territory, or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union, with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of their admission." In a report accompanying the bill, Douglas’s committee wrote that the intent of the Utah and New Mexico acts:

...were intended to have a far more comprehensive and enduring effect than the mere adjustment of the difficulties arising out of the recent acquisition of Mexican territory. They were designed to establish certain great principles, which would not only furnish adequate remedies for existing evils, but, in all time to come, avoid the perils of a similar agitation, by withdrawing the question of slavery from the halls of Congress and the political arena, and committing it to the arbitrament of those who were immediately interested in, and alone responsible for its consequences.

The report compared the situation in New Mexico and Utah with the situation in Nebraska. In the first instance, many had argued that slavery had previously been prohibited under Mexican law just as it was prohibited in Nebraska under the Missouri Compromise. Just as the creation of New Mexico and Utah territories had not ruled on the validity of Mexican law on the acquired territory, the Nebraska bill was neither "affirming or repealing ... the Missouri act." In other words, popular sovereignty was being established by ignoring, rather than addressing, the problem presented by the Missouri Compromise.

Douglas’ attempt to finesse his way around the Missouri Compromise did not work. Archibald Dixon, a Kentucky Whig, believed that unless the Missouri Compromise was explicitly repealed, slaveholders would be reluctant to move to the new territory until slavery was actually approved by the settlers -- settlers who would most likely hold free-soil views. On January 16 Dixon surprised Douglas by introducing an amendment that would repeal the section of the Missouri Compromise prohibiting slavery above the 36°30' parallel. Douglas met privately with Dixon and in the end, despite his misgivings on northern reaction, agreed to accept Dixon’s arguments. From a political standpoint, the Whig Party had been in decline in the South because of the effectiveness with which the Democrats had hammered southern Whigs over slavery issues. The Whigs hoped that by seizing the initiative on this issue that they would be identified as the strongest defender of slavery.

Charles Sumner on Douglas -- "Alas! too often those principles which give consistency, individuality, and form to the Northern character, which render it staunch, strong, and seaworthy, which bind it together as with iron, are drawn out, one by one, like the bolts of the ill-fitted vessel, and from the miserable, loosened fragments is formed that human anomaly -- a Northern man with Southern principles. Sir, no such man can speak for the North."

A similar amendment was offered in the House by Philip Phillips of Alabama. With the encouragement of the "F Street Mess", Douglas met with them and Phillips to ensure that the momentum for passing the bill remained with the Democratic Party. Towards this end, they arranged to meet with President Franklin Pierce to ensure that the issue would be declared a test of party loyalty within the Democratic Party.

Meeting with President Pierce

Pierce had barely mentioned Nebraska in his State of the Union message the previous month and was not enthusiastic about the implications of repealing the Missouri Compromise. Close advisors Senator Lewis Cass, a proponent of popular sovereignty as far back as 1848 as an alternative to the Wilmot Proviso, and Secretary of State William L. Marcy both told Pierce that repeal would create serious political problems. On Saturday January 22 the full cabinet met, and only Secretary of War Jefferson Davis and Secretary of Navy James C. Dobbin supported repeal. Instead the president and cabinet submitted to Douglas an alternative plan that would have sought out a judicial ruling on the constitutionality of the Missouri Compromise. Both Pierce and Attorney General Caleb Cushing believed that the Supreme Court would find it unconstitutional.

Douglas’ committee met later that night. Douglas was agreeable to the proposal, but the Atchison group was not. Determined to offer the repeal to Congress that Monday but reluctant to act without Pierce’s commitment, Douglas arranged through Secretary Davis to meet with President Pierce on Sunday even though Pierce generally refrained from conducting any business on a Sunday. Douglas was accompanied at the meeting by Atchison, Hunter, Phillips, and John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky.

Douglas and Atchison first met alone with Pierce before the whole group convened. Pierce was persuaded to support repeal, and, at Douglas’ insistence, Pierce provided a written draft asserting that the Missouri Compromise had been made inoperative by the principles of the Compromise of 1850. Later, Pierce informed his cabinet which concurred in the change of direction. The Washington Union, the communications organ for the administration, wrote on January 24 that support for the bill would be "a test of Democratic orthodoxy."

Debate in the Senate

On January 23, a revised bill was introduced in the Senate. In addition to the changes regarding repeal of the Missouri Compromise, Nebraska was now divided into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, with the division coming at the thirty-seventh parallel. The division was the result of concerns expressed by settlers already in Nebraska as well as the Senators from Iowa who were concerned with the location of the territory's seat of government if such a large territory was created. Existing language which affirmed the application of all other laws of the United States in the new territory was supplemented by the language agreed on with President Pierce that read, “except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March 6, 1820, which was superseded by the legislation of 1850, commonly called the compromise measures, and is declared inoperative.” Identical legislation was soon introduced in the House.

Forcing Slavery Down the Throat of a Freesoiler
An 1854 cartoon depicts a giant free soiler being held down by James Buchanan and Lewis Cass standing on the Democratic platform marked "Kansas", "Cuba" and "Central America". Franklin Pierce also holds down the giant's beard as Stephen A. Douglas shoves a black man down his throat.

Historian Allan Nevins wrote that "two interconnected battles began to rage, one in Congress and one in the country at large: each fought with a pertinacity, bitterness, and rancor unknown even in Wilmot Proviso days." In Congress, the freesoilers were at a distinct disadvantage. The Democrats held large majorities in each house, and Stephen Douglas, "a ferocious fighter, the fiercest, most ruthless, and most unscrupulous that Congress had perhaps ever known" led a tightly disciplined party. It was in the nation at large that the opponents of Nebraska hoped to achieve a moral victory. The New York Times, which had earlier supported President Pierce, predicted that this would be the final straw for northern supporters of the slavery forces and would "create a deep-seated, intense, and ineradicable hatred of the institution which will crush its political power, at all hazards, and at any cost."

The day after the bill was reintroduced, two Ohioans, Representative Joshua Giddings and Senator Salmon P. Chase, published a free soil response titled, “Appeal of the Independent Democrats in Congress to the People of the United States.” The Appeal stated:

We arraign this bill as a gross violation of a sacred pledge; as a criminal betrayal of precious rights; as part and parcel of an atrocious plot to exclude from a vast unoccupied region immigrants from the Old World and free laborers from our own States, and convert it into a dreary region of despotism,inhabited by masters and slaves.

Douglas took the Appeal personally and responded in Congress when the debate was opened on January 30 before a full house and packed gallery. Douglas biographer Robert W. Johanssen described part of the speech:

Douglas charged the authors of the "Appeal", whom he referred to throughout as the "Abolitionist confederates," with having perpetrated a "base falsehood" in their protest. He expressed his own sense of betrayal, recalling that Chase, "with a smiling face and the appearance of friendship," had appealed for a postponement of debate on the ground that he had not yet familiarized himself with the bill. "Little did I suppose at the time that I granted that act of courtesy," Douglas remarked, that Chase and his compatriots had published a document "in which they arraigned me as having been guilty of a criminal betrayal of my trust," of bad faith, and of plotting against the cause of free government. While other Senators were attending divine worship, they had been "assembled in a secret conclave," devoting the Sabbath to their own conspiratorial and deceitful purposes.

The debate would continue for four months. Douglas remained the main advocate for the bill while Chase, William Seward of New York, and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts led the opposition. The New York Tribune wrote on March 2 that, "The unanimous sentiment of the North is indignant resistance. ... The whole population are full of it. The feeling in 1848 was far inferior to this in strength and universality."

Sam Houston from Texas was one of the few southern opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. In the debate he urged, “Maintain the Missouri Compromise! Stir not up agitation! Give us peace!”

Alexander Stephens from Georgia -- “Nebraska is through the House. I took the reins in my hand, applied the whip and spur, and brought the 'wagon' out at eleven o'clock P.M. Glory enough for one day.”

The debate in the Senate concluded on March 4, 1854 when Stephen Douglas, beginning near midnight on March 3, made a five and a half hour speech. The final vote in favor of passage was 37 to 14. Free state senators voted 14 to 12 in favor while slave state senators overwhelmingly supported the bill, 23 to 2.

Debate in the House of Representatives

The bill next moved to the House of Representatives. On March 21, 1854, as a delaying tactic, the legislation was referred by a vote of 110 to 95 to the committee of the whole where it would be the last item on the calendar. Realizing from the vote to stall that the act faced an uphill struggle, the Pierce Administration made it clear to all Democrats that passage of the bill was essential to the party and would dictate how federal patronage would be handled. Jefferson Davis and Attorney General Caleb Cushing from Massachusetts, along with Douglas, spearheaded the partisan efforts. By the end of April Douglas believed that there were enough votes to pass the bill. The House leadership then began a series of roll call votes in which legislation ahead of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was called to the floor and tabled without debate.

Thomas Hart Benton was among those speaking forcibly against the measure. On April 25, in a House speech that biographer William Nisbet Chambers called “long, passionate, historical, [and] polemical,” Benton attacked the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, which he “had stood upon ... above thirty years, and intended to stand upon it to he end -- solitary and alone, if need be; but preferring company.” The speech was distributed afterwards as a pamphlet when opposition to the act moved outside the walls of Congress.

It was not until May 8 that the debate began in the House. The debate was even more intense than in the Senate. While it seemed to be a forgone conclusion that the bill would pass, the opponents went all out to fight it. Historian Michael Morrison wrote:

Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri -- "What is the excuse for all this turmoil and mischief? We are told it is to keep the question of slavery out of Congress! Great God! It was out of Congress, completely, entirely, and forever out of Congress, unless Congress dragged it in by breaking down the sacred laws which settled it!"

A filibuster led by Lewis D. Campbell, an Ohio free-soiler, nearly provoked the House into a war of more than words. Campbell, joined by other antislavery northerners, exchanged insults and invectives with southerners, neither side giving quarter. Weapons were brandished on the floor of the House. Finally, bumptiousness gave way to violence. Henry A. Edmundson, a Virginia Democrat, well oiled and well armed, had to be restrained from making a violent attack on Campbell. Only after the sergeant at arms arrested him, debate was cut off, and the House adjourned did the melee subside.

The floor debate was handled by Alexander Stephens of Georgia. Stephens insisted that the Missouri Compromise had never been a true compromise but had been imposed on the South. He argued that the issue was whether republican principles -- "that the citizens of every distinct community or State should have the right to govern themselves in their domestic matters as they please" -- would be honored.

The final vote in favor of the bill was 113 to 100. Northern Democrats split in favor of the bill by a narrow 44 to 42 vote while all 45 northern Whigs opposed it. In the South, Democrats voted in favor by 57 to 2 and Whigs by a closer 12 to 7. President Pierce signed the measure into law on May 30.

Lincoln-Douglas Debates

Act orchestrator Senator Stephen A. Douglas and former Illinois congressman Abraham Lincoln aired their disagreement over the Kansas-Nebraska Act in three public speeches during September and October 1854. Lincoln gave his most comprehensive argument against slavery and the provisions of the Act in Peoria, Illinois, on October 16, the Peoria Speech. He and Douglas both spoke to the large audience, Douglas first and Lincoln in response two hours later. Lincoln's three-hour speech, presented thorough moral, legal and economic arguments against slavery, set the stage for Lincoln’s political future.

Hostilities

Pro-slavery settlers came to Kansas mainly from neighboring Missouri. Their influence in territorial elections was often bolstered by resident Missourians who crossed into Kansas solely for the purpose of voting in such ballots. They formed groups like the Blue Lodges and were dubbed border ruffians a term coined by opponent and abolitionist Horace Greeley. Abolitionist settlers moved from the East with express purpose of making Kansas a free state. A clash between the opposing sides was inevitable.

Successive territorial governors, usually sympathetic to slavery, attempted unsuccessfully to maintain the peace. The territorial capital of Lecompton, Kansas, the target of much agitation, became such a hostile environment for Free-Staters that they set up their own unofficial legislature at Topeka.

John Brown and his sons gained notoriety in the fight against slavery by brutally murdering five pro-slavery farmers in the Pottawatomie Massacre with a broadsword. Brown also helped defend a few dozen Free-State supporters from several hundred angry pro-slavery supporters at the town of Osawatomie.

Hostilities between the factions reached a state of low-intensity civil war, which was damaging to President Pierce. The nascent Republican Party sought to capitalize on the scandal of "Bleeding Kansas". Routine ballot-rigging and intimidation practiced by both pro and anti-slavery settlers failed to deter the immigration of anti-slavery settlers, who won a demographic victory in the race to populate the state.

Constitution Amendment rights

The pro-slavery territorial legislature ultimately proposed a state constitution for approval by referendum. The constitution was offered in two alternative forms, neither of which made slavery illegal. Free Soil settlers boycotted the legislature's referendum and organized their own, which approved a free-state constitution. The results of the competing referendums were sent to Washington by the territorial governor.

President James Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution (which allowed slavery, but disallowed import of new slaves) to Congress for approval. The Senate approved the admission of Kansas as a state under the Lecompton Constitution, despite the opposition of Senator Douglas, who believed that the Kansas referendum on the Constitution, by failing to offer the alternative of prohibiting slavery, was unfair. The measure was subsequently blocked in the United States House of Representatives, where northern congressmen refused to admit Kansas as a slave state. Senator James Hammond of South Carolina (famous for his "King Cotton" speech) characterized this resolution as the expulsion of the state, asking, "If Kansas is driven out of the Union for being a slave state, can any Southern state remain within it with honor?"

Results

The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided the nation and pointed it toward civil war. The act itself virtually nullified the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise of 1850. The turmoil over the act split both the Democratic and Know Nothing parties and gave rise to the Republican Party, which split the United States into two major political parties- North (Republican) and South (Democratic).

Eventually a new anti-slavery state constitution was drawn up. On January 29, 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state. Nebraska was not admitted to the Union as a state until after the Civil War in 1867.

References

• Chalmer, William Nisbet. Old Bullion Benton: Senator From the New West. (1956)
• Foner, Eric. Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War. (1970) ISBN 0-19-509497-2
• Freehling, William W. The Road to Disunion: Secessionists at Bay 1776-1854. (1990) ISBN 0-19-505814-3
• Johannsen. Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas (1973) ISBN 0-19-501620-3
• Morrison, Michael. Slavery and the American West: The Eclipse of Manifest Destiny and the Coming of the Civil War (1997) online edition
• Nevins, Allan. Ordeal of the Union: A House Dividing 1852-1857. (1947) SBN 684-10424-5
• Nichols, Roy F. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September 1956): 187-212. Online at JSTOR at most academic libraries.
• Potter, David M. The Impending Crisis, 1848-1861 (1976), Pulitzer prize winning scholarly history.
• SenGupta, Gunja. “Bleeding Kansas: A Review Essay.” Kansas History 24 (Winter 2001/2002): 318-341.
• Holt, Michael. "The Political Crisis of the 1850s." (1978)

External links

• An annotated bibliography
• Kansas-Nebraska Act and related resources at the Library of Congress
• Printer-friendly transcript of the act