Kansas - Nebraska Act was a bill that became law on May 30, 1854, by which the
U.S. Congress established the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. By 1854
the organization of the vast Platte and Kansas river countries west of Iowa
and Missouri was overdue. As an isolated issue territorial organization of this
area was no problem. It was, however, irrevocably bound to the bitter
sectional controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories and
was further complicated by conflict over the location of the projected
transcontinental railroad . Under no circumstances did proslavery
Congressmen want a free territory (Kansas) west of Missouri. Because the
West was expanding rapidly, territorial organization, despite these
difficulties, could no longer be postponed. Four attempts to organize a
single territory for this area had already been defeated in Congress, largely
because of Southern opposition to the Missouri Compromise . Although the
last of these attempts to organize the area had nearly been successful,
Stephen A. Douglas , chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories,
decided to offer territorial legislation making concessions to the South.
Douglas's motives have remained largely a matter of speculation. Various
historians have emphasized Douglas's desire for the Presidency, his wish to
cement the bonds of the Democratic party, his interest in expansion and
railroad building, or his desire to activate the unimpressive Pierce
administration. The bill he reported in Jan., 1854, contained the provision
that the question of slavery should be left to the decision of the territorial
settlers themselves. This was the famous principle that Douglas now called
popular sovereignty , though actually it had been enunciated four years
earlier in the Compromise of 1850 . In its final form Douglas's bill provided for
the creation of two new territories - Kansas and Nebraska - instead of one.
The obvious inference - at least to Missourians - was that the first would be
slave, the second free. The Kansas - Nebraska act flatly contradicted the
provisions of the Missouri Compromise (under which slavery would have been
barred from both territories); indeed, an amendment was added specifically
repealing that compromise. This aspect of the bill in particular enraged the
antislavery forces, but after three month of bitter debate in Congress,
Douglas, backed by President Pierce and the Southerners, saw it adopted.
Its effects were anything but reassuring to those who had hoped for a
peaceful solution. The popular sovereignty provision caused both proslavery
and antislavery forces to marshal strength and exert full pressure to
determine the "popular" decision in Kansas in their own favor, using groups
as the Emigrant Aid Compamy and the result was the tragedy of "bleeding
Kansas". Northerners and Southerners were aroused to such passions that
sectional division reached a point that precluded reconciliation. A new
political organization, the Republican party, was founded by opponents of
the bill, and the United States was propelled toward the Civil War.