Kansas-Nebraska Act

Examples of Kansas-Nebraska Act in the following topics:

• The Kansas-Nebraska Act

  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 mandated that popular sovereignty would determine the slave or free status in the region.
  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, however, drafted by Democrat Stephen A.
  • The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to facilitate the growth of farmland throughout the territory and the development of a transcontinental railroad through the Midwest.
  • In 1854, former congressman Abraham Lincoln publicly aired his moral, legal, and economic arguments against the expansion of slavery, as well as his opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act in three separate speeches in Illinois.
  • Evaluate how the Kansas-Nebraska Act affected the political debate over slavery

• Bleeding Kansas

  • The events later known as Bleeding Kansas were set into motion by the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854, which nullified the Missouri Compromise and instead implemented the concept of popular sovereignty.
  • However, the Kansas-Nebraska Act resulted in mass immigration to Kansas by activists from both sides.
  • The resulting Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, drafted by Democrat Stephen Douglas (IL), repealed the Compromise of 1820 (which had previously closed Kansas to slaveowners) and put the Compromise of 1850 to the test.
  • The initial purpose of the Kansas–Nebraska Act was to open up many thousands of new farms and facilitate the development of a Transcontinental Railroad in the Midwest Douglas and other representatives hoped that by tagging on the popular sovereignty mandate, they could evade having to confront the slave issue in the organization of the Kansas-Nebraska territory.
  • To Northerners, Sumner was an anti-slavery martyr brutally assaulted for asserting his views on the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

• Whigs and Democrats

  • In 1854, Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which opened new western territories to slavery.
  • Southern Whigs generally supported the Kansas-Nebraska Act, while Northern Whigs remained strongly opposed to the expansion of slavery into the territories.
  • Most remaining Northern Whigs, including Abraham Lincoln, began to form factions that attacked the Act, appealing to widespread Northern outrage over the repeal of the Missouri Compromise.
  • Following the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Democratic Party also experienced an internal split.

• The Election of 1856

  • Frémont, who condemned the Kansas-Nebraska Act and supported measures to curtail the expansion of slavery.

• The Emergence of Abraham Lincoln

  • As the author of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Douglas's aim in the debates was to defend his position that popular sovereignty was the best method to legislate on the expansion of slavery, regardless of the Dred Scott decision.
  • House of Representatives from 1847 to 1849, had most recently practiced law in Springfield and only returned to politics in order to oppose the proslavery Kansas-Nebraska Act.
  • After the debates, Southern politicians demanded the establishment of slave codes in territories such as Kansas in order to challenge Douglas's Freeport Doctrine.

• The Republican Party

  • The main cause was opposition to the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise by which slavery was kept out of Kansas.

• The Ostend Manifesto and Cuba

  • The movement for annexation grew even more intense as free states from the Western territories were admitted to the Union and political conflict erupted in the wake of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, upsetting the already delicate balance of power between slave and free states in the Senate.
  • It became a rallying cry for Northerners in the events that would later be termed "Bleeding Kansas," and the political fallout was a significant setback for the Pierce Administration.

• Conclusion: The Increasing Inevitability of War

  • The Fugitive Slave Act, passed in 1850, caused controversy and contributed to Northern fears of a "slave power conspiracy."
  • The Compromise of 1850 was tested when a mass influx of settlers arrived in Kansas and Nebraska territories to determine through popular sovereignty whether or not slavery would be permitted in each region.
  • In 1861, Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state.
  • Nebraska was not admitted to the Union until 1867, after the Civil War.
  • Frémont, who publicly criticized the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the expansion of slavery into U.S. territories.

• American Indian Policy

  • The lands that natives resided on, Nebraska and Kansas territories, ended up being taken from the natives by the government and given to settlers.
  • The Dawes Act (also called the "General Allotment Act" or "Dawes Severalty Act of 1887") was adopted by Congress in 1887 and authorized the president of the United States to survey Indian tribal land and divide it into allotments for individual Indians.
  • The Dawes Act was amended in 1891 and again in 1906 by the Burke Act.
  • The Dawes Act was named for its sponsor, Senator Henry L.
  • After decades of seeing the disarray these acts caused, the Franklin D.

• Oregon and the Overland Trails

  • The eastern part of the trail spanned part of the future state of Kansas and nearly all of what are now the states of Nebraska and Wyoming.
  • There were various offshoots in Missouri, Iowa, and the Nebraska Territory; the routes converged along the lower Platte River Valley near Fort Kearny, Nebraska Territory and led to rich farmlands west of the Rocky Mountains.
  • Starting from Atchison, Kansas, the trail descended into Colorado before looping back up to southern Wyoming and rejoining the Oregon Trail at Fort Bridger.
  • The latter were were known as exodusters, referencing the biblical flight from Egypt, because they fled the racism of the South, with most headed to Kansas from Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.
  • The path of the Oregon Trail, spanning the present-day states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho, and Oregon.