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Essay On The Kansas Nebraska Act Of 1854

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was a bill that gave the settlers of the territory, Kansas and Nebraska, to decide whether slavery would be allowed or not. The bill proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, overruled the Missouri Compromise (a compromise that Missouri entered the Union as a slave state but slavery would be forbidden anywhere else in the Louisiana Purchase North of 36* 30’), a boundary between the free and the slave states. This bill split two major political parties at that time; which were: the Whig Party and the Democratic Party, but also helped on the unification of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party was split into two; the Northern and the Southern side. Northern Democrats assumed that under this bill, slavery would never actually expand into the territories. They believe popular sovereignty would hold the land for the North. However, Southern Democrats believe that popular sovereignty would permit and protect slavery in the territories. Sothern’s believed that slaveholders had the same right as non-slaveholders to bring their property, including slaves, into the territories. When the Democratic Party had a convention in South Carolina, the Southern Democrats insisted that the party secures the rights of slaveholders to enter the territories. …show more content…

Most southern Whigs supported the act while Northern Whigs strongly opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. The southern members nearly all owned slaves, while the northeastern Whigs represented businessmen who didn’t much care about slavery but didn’t want it to expand. There was no compromise that could keep the Whigs united; most of the southern Whigs soon went to the Democratic Party and the Northern Whigs reorganized themselves with other non-slavery interests and became the Republican Party. Thus, the end of the Whig Party and the creation of the Republican

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a bill that essentially disregarded and relinquished the Missouri Compromise. The Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that any westward expansion of the United States was to have the decision on slavery made via popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty, in regards to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was the idea that the decision on slavery in a region should be decided by the people who live there. This seemed fair, but the issue with instating popular sovereignty was that the parameters of the Missouri Compromise stated that slavery could not exist anywhere above the 36°30° line (History.com). Therefore, popular sovereignty would entirely disregard important factors of the Missouri Compromise, which was regarded by many as a strong force in holding the Union

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Northern and Southern opinions on slavery differed greatly and caused a major divide. While the South fully supported slavery, the Northern citizens were abolitionists set on dissolving the act. Northern Whigs were major abolitionists before and during the Civil War. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 forced all African-Americans in the US to become slaves if they were found by any slave owner, even if he was not their own. This law applied to the entirety of the country, thus making free African-Americans subject to slavery and inhibiting the Whigs from legally protecting any remaining Northern African-Americans (Document M).

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act would violate the Missouri Compromise, which had been keeping the union from falling apart for 34 years. Almost all of the Southern Whigs voted for the bill and all of the Northern Whigs opposed it. This caused there to be conflict and no agreement could be found, thus causing the Southern Whigs to be known as Democrats and the Northern Whigs to stay Whigs. It had split up the Whigs and Democrats to form a new party; the Republicans. They were anti-slavery.

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The 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act was an act, which allowed new territories to decide if they were a free or slave state by popular sovereignty (Civilwar.org, Kansas-Nebraska Act). Kansas-Nebraska Act negated the Missouri Compromise. Missouri Compromise was an effort by the congress to diffuse the political rivalries triggered by the request of Missouri in 1819 for admission as a state in which supported slavery (Garraty and Foner). This was done to restore the balance of slave and free states at the time. Kansas-Nebraska Act violated the compromise that was made in the Missouri Compromise, it reignited the disagreement between the anti and pro-slavery factions, which lead to violent events.

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The compromise found in the United States Constitution that will be discussed in this essay is the three-fifth compromise. The three-fifth compromise was in regards to Southern states wanting to count slaves as three-fifths of a person when determining the population but in order to count slaves, those from the north wanted taxation in proportion to representation. The compromise can be found in Article one, section two and states the following, “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians

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Many of the political events lead us into battles, like the Kansas-Nebraska Act during 1854. Senator Stephen Douglass, had thought that popular sovereignty seemed liked an excellent way to decide whether slavery would be allowed in Nebraska Territory. Douglas introduced a bill in congress on January 23, 1854 that would divide the area into two territories. Nebraska is in the north and Kansas is in the south, since the Kansas and Nebraska territory lay north of the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30’ and thereof it was legally closed to slavery. Kansas and Nebraska Act became a law in 1854.

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Since the Kansas-Nebraska act let the Kansas and Nebraska territories vote for whether the were going to become a slave state or not, it really started the breakup of the Democratic Party. There were already some democrats who liked slavery and there were also some that would rather not have it. These people with different thoughts were starting to break apart already but the Kansas-Nebraska really drew the line. When the Act was passed the anti-slavery democrats were furious and split into the Republican Party. They were mad because it repealed the Missouri Compromise which was outlawing slavery above the 36*30’ line.

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Slave Power was the term that was present in the Missouri debates of 1820s and became popular in the 1830s. Salmon P. Chase used the term to portray southern slaveholders organized politically as a clique to dominate the national government and state governments in the south, reverse the policy of founding fathers, and make slavery the ruling interest of the nation. [1] As the Slave Power grew more powerful, the Republicans severely criticized these slave owners in the south “unceasingly aggressive, insatiably greedy for still more representatives and senators, and increasingly hostile to public policies.” [2] The slaveholders dominated the federal and southern state governments and used the political leverage to foster the institution’s growth

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People were murdered, brutally injured, or financially hurt in the name of slavery; for and against it. Many of the laws passed for slavery caused citizens to rebel and act out against the government. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the epitome of these rebellions. The Kansas-Nebraska Act stated that popular sovereignty would be used to establish if a state was a free state or a slave state. This act abolished the Missouri Compromise Line, which allowed all states North of the line to be free states and all states South of the line to become slave states, ("Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

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The Democratic Party and the Whig party were largely opposed to each other in their ideals. The Democrats, led by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Burnett, and James Madison, were devoted to Jefferson's idea of an Agrarian Society regulated by the common man. They favored the rural interests of the working class over the wealthy, supported states' rights and the life real interpretation of the constitution. But their main goal was to prevent the government from becoming too much like a monarchy. The Democratic Party included supporters such as farmers, laborers, and Catholics.

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Also, many southerners during the election were unhappy with Lincoln and wanted change. But the political powers of government were very focused on slavery. The South wanted control over the federal government so they had the power to regulate slavery. This drew a growing divide within the nation. The South relied on slave labor and was less industrialization, favored low tariffs, and opposed direct taxation.

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Implemented in 1854, this revoked the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which forbade slavery in the North. Even though Kansas would not be considered as a Northern state, it became a place of bloodshed as pro- and anti-slavery aspects expanded into the territory, strengthening the rising tension that was already present between the two parties. Pieter Geyl confirms that the North and South were ‘divided by a moral issue of the first magnitude,’ with one party ‘detesting slavery and, the other glorifying it as the basis of its social system.’ ‘Bleeding Kansas’ was an important component in understanding that the different ideologies of slavery between the people of Kansas at this time, resulted in their inability to compensate personal values for communal peace. As this act was aimed to save the North, to unify rather than divide, the Kansas-Nebraska Act resulted in the opposing contention. Reporter William Russell from the London Times had additionally claimed that the ‘tone’ and ‘speech’ of Southerners when alluding to people from the North were said in spite and hostility.

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After the defeat in the Civil War, Arkansas and the other Confederate states had no choice but to accept the idea of “reconstruction” and defeat. Arkansas had mainly been ran by the Democratic Party, but the Republican Party was on the rise after the Civil War. Both parties had different and distinct goals for the reconstruction of Arkansas. The Democratic Party was interested in rebuilding Arkansas while the Republican Party was interested in changing the state’s government all together. Throughout the Reconstruction period, the Democrats and Republicans held different goals for the “reconstruction” of Arkansas.

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Since the United States has existed, slavery has been secluded to the southern portion of the country. As time went on the northern states became increasingly progressive while southern states found more reasons to justify the treatment of African Americans. The free state party wanted whites and blacks to be free, would support the Topeka constitution since it is anti-slavery, and would support the United States of America in the Civil War. The border ruffians wanted African Americans to be enslaved by whites, would support the LeCompton constitution since it allowed slavery, and would support the Confederate States of America in the Civil War.

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The Democrats endorsed the “popular sovereignty” approach to slavery expansion that was used in the Kansas-Nebraska act. Their platform stated that new territories should decide themselves whether to be slave or free by popular vote; however, anti-slavery northerners feared that this result in the expansion of slavery further westward, a major fear of the Republican party. The Republican

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