The Kansas-Nebraska Act took place in 1854. The Act was based on the move of slavery. I have learned that many people were against slavery much like I would have been. As we researched the Civil War, I have seen that slavery was a major issue. People tried to push slavery into other states while some were trying to stop it. I think that is why this subject interested me so much. The act was also around the Missouri Compromise, which I did not know that the compromise had that big of a stand in the act. I like to study about things that show us why we are the way we are today. If the Kansas-Nebraska Act hadn't come along, who knows if we would still have slaves today, or if it wasn't for Rosa Parks who made the black movement.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by Congress in 1854. It dealt with the problem of slavery in new territories just as the Missouri Compromise of 1850. This act created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska and allowed slavery in each of them. The act specifically repealed the Missouri Compromise, which established the 36 degree 30’ parallel from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains as a boundary between the slave and free territory, thereby wiping out the dividing tline between the two.

The Kansas and Nebraska Act wanted to create the two new territories in the west allowing Kansas as a slave state, but Nebraska was to be entered into the Union as a free state. Northerners were antislavery. Southerners schemed to extend slavery into Kansas, so the act brought a new and greater struggle for control of the western territory.

Stephen Douglas introduced the bill into Congress. His bill included a provision that provided popular sovereignty which stated that all questions of slavery in the new territories were to be decided by the settlers of the region rather than by Congress. This was totally against the Missouri Compromise but it was hoped that it would win due to its support from the Southern congressmen. Antislavery people in the North furiously attacked the bill and the debate was long and bitter. President Franklin Pierce supported the bill and it became law. When this act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854, it infuriated people in the North who concidered the Missouri Compromise to be a long-standing binding agreement.

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed, pro-slavery and anitslavery supports rushed to settle in Kansas to affect the outcome of the first election after the law went into effect. Pro-slavery settlers carried the first election after the law went into effect. Pro-slavery settlers carried the election but were charged with fraud and the results were not accempted by the anit-slavery settlers. When another election was held by the anti-slavery settlers the refused to vote. This led to the establishment of two opposing legislatures in Kansas. Violence soon erupted and the territory soon earned the nickname “Bleeding Kansas” as the death toll rose. Federal troops were sent in to stop the violence and when another election was held and once again charged with fraud, Congress refused to allow Kansas to become a state. Eventually, the anti-slavery settlers outnumbered pro-slavery settlers and a new constitution was drawn up. On January 29, 1861 Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state.

As a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act a new political organization was formed, the Republican party. It was founded by the opponents of the bill and also led to the end of the Whig party. The frist leader of this new party was Abraham Lincoln who then had to deal with the problems facing the country, the biggest of which was the onset of the Civil War.

It is said that there is not any law in Nebraska on the subject of slavery. Which made slavery there would help to make people have freedom. Slavery was first introduced without a law. A white man takes his slavery into Nebraska, and was told that because this is a free state that the black man was free. So the man took his slave into court to question weither the slave was free or not. The man was set free after the court trial.

I learned that the Kansas-Nebraska Act was a majority for setting territories between the two states which turned into a slavery issue. It ended on May 30, 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act solved a lot in the Civil War, it was nothing that made the guns come out, but it help free slaves and help people to change there minds about slavery. I think that Kansas-Nebraska Act was a major issue and I am glad that I got to study such an interesting subject.