After the Compromise of 1850 proved only a temporary solution to the divisive debate on the extension of slavery into U.S. territories, Stephen A. Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act offered another temporary solution. One of the most significant political congressional acts of the nineteenth century, the new law ultimately only accelerated the movement toward civil war.
When the U.S. Congress passed the Compromise of 1850, it laid aside the argument over the expansion of slavery into the territories only temporarily, even though the compromise seemed to be working successfully during the first two or three years immediately following its enactment. Several events kept the compromise in the public eye, including the seizure in the North of African Americans under the provisions of the Second Fugitive Slave
Act]
Many people in the United States hoped that the slavery issue would disappear, and the economic pressures of life absorbed the attention of most average citizens. Moreover, no prominent politicians had captured the public’s imagination. Noncontroversial and lackluster candidates were nominated in the presidential campaign
In January, 1854, the issue of slavery in the federal territories was reopened when Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, chairman of the Committee on Territories, reported a bill to organize the Platte country west of Iowa and Missouri as the territory of Nebraska. Douglas’s main interest was in opening the West to settlement and to the construction of a transcontinental railroad. He did not wish to reopen the slavery question, and—like his soon-to-be nemesis, Abraham Lincoln—he doubted that slavery could survive on the Great Plains. However, he also realized that he needed southern votes to get his territorial bill through Congress.
In its original form, Douglas’s bill included a provision, similar to that found in the acts organizing the territories of Utah and New Mexico, that the territory itself would determine the question of its status as a slave or free state at the time of its admission. The clause dealing with slavery was intentionally ambiguous, but it probably would have left in effect—at least during the territorial stage—the provisions of the Missouri Compromise that barred slavery in the Louisiana Purchase territory north of 36°30′ north latitude. The ambiguity of the bill bothered southern political leaders, particularly the rabidly proslavery David Rice Atchison
Yielding to the pressure of Senator Atchison and other southern leaders, Douglas and his committee added a section to the bill that permitted the people of the territory, acting through their representatives, to decide whether the territory should be slave or free. This “popular sovereignty” formula for dealing with the slavery question implied the repeal of the Missouri Compromise’s restriction on slavery.
However, proslavery leaders were not satisfied with the implicit abrogation of the Missouri Compromise. As Whig senator Archibald Dixon
Much more was at work, however. The Missouri Compromise had led to the creation of the political party system, utilized by the Democrats and finally adopted by the Whigs
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, especially Douglas’s concept of popular sovereignty, offered hope to the South that the dynamic created by the spoils system could be short-circuited. If territories could decide whether or not to permit slavery, then slave interests could flood the new territories with proslavery settlers, who would then vote in favor of slavery, regardless of the attitudes of Congress or the president.
Douglas still had to guide the bill through passage in the face of widespread and violent criticism from the North. The bill was certain of passage in the Senate, although it was the object of impassioned attack by Senators Salmon P. Chase
By whip and spur, the Kansas-Nebraska Act was driven through the House by a large sectional vote of 113-100 on May 30, 1854. Nearly all southern Democrats supported the measure. All forty-five northern Whigs
The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act had momentous consequences. The act touched off the forces that eventually brought war. It reopened sectional issues and embittered sectional relations by arousing the entire North. It destroyed the Whig Party
On a personal level, Douglas gained little support in the South and lost an important part of his support in the North. Misinterpreting northern sentiment toward this initially innocent piece of legislation, Douglas had opened a political Pandora’s box. Nevertheless, the legislation reflected Douglas’s personal views accurately. He sincerely disliked slavery but thought that it should be regarded as an issue of choice by slaveholders. Therefore, the matter of human bondage was not a moral issue but simply a matter of votes. Douglas could say honestly that he opposed slavery personally, but supported the right of slaveholders to own slaves. Thus, the agony of Douglas and the struggle for Kansas had begun.
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Gienapp, William E. The Origins of the Republican Party, 1852-1856. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. Seminal work that downplays the role of specific events in the success of the Republican Party and emphasizes the competition between the Know-Nothings and the Republicans. Focuses on the collapse of the Whigs and the nativist movements that reflected mass changes at the state levels. -
Holt, Michael. The Political Crisis of the 1850’s. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978. Thorough treatment of the era that emphasizes the breakdown of the two-party system as a cause of the Civil War. Downplays economic and cultural factors. -
Johannsen, Robert W. Stephen A. Douglas. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. The quintessential biography of Douglas, who introduced the Kansas-Nebraska Act. -
McPherson, James W. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Era of the Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Broad historical narrative, emphasizing slavery and cultural differences as the causes of the Civil War. -
Nevins, Allen. A House Dividing, 1852-1857. Vol. 2 in Ordeal of the Union. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1947. Brilliantly written, classic interpretation of sectional differences as the cause of the Civil War. Encompassing people, events, economics, culture, and ideology. Perhaps the best starting place for an understanding of the United States in 1854. -
Nichols, Roy Franklin. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act: A Century of Historiography.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (September, 1956): 187-212. Traditional guide to the historical literature and a concise account of the legislative history and consequences of the act. -
Waugh, John C. On the Brink of Civil War: The Compromise of 1850 and How It Changed the Course of American History. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2003. Study of the congressional wrangling among northern abolitionists, southern secessionists, and moderates from both regions during the decade following passage of the Compromise of 1850. -
Wolff, Gerald. The Kansas-Nebraska Bill: Party, Section, and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Revisionist Press, 1977. Another interpretation of the Civil War emphasizing party breakdown, but specific to the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
Burr’s Conspiracy
Missouri Compromise
Compromise of 1850
Second Fugitive Slave Law
Birth of the Republican Party
Bleeding Kansas
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
Lincoln Is Elected U.S. President
Establishment of the Confederate States of America
Lincoln Is Inaugurated President
Salmon P. Chase; Stephen A. Douglas; Franklin Pierce; Alexander H. Stephens; Charles Sumner.