Kansas-Nebraska Act

With energy and skill, Douglas piloted the Kansas-Nebraska through the Senate. He maintained that the Compromise of 1850, by introducing popular sovereignty into the territory north of 36º30´, had implicitly repealed the Missouri Compromise. Although this was a specious argument – the 1850 legislation applied only to territory acquired from Mexico, not the Louisiana Purchase – it was to become Southern and Democratic orthodoxy. Douglas also insisted – as he had in 1850 – that Nature would prevent slavery from gaining a foothold in the new territory…Douglass drove the bill to Senate passage on March 3 by a vote of 37 to 14. Northern Democratic senators voted 14 to 5 for the bill. The struggle in the House was harsher and more prolonged, for Northern Democrats there had to face the voters in November. At one point in the House debate, some congressmen drew weapons, and bloodshed was narrowly avoided. The House finally passed the bill on May 22 by a vote of 113 to 100. Northern Democrats divided 44 to 44 on the measure, a sure sign of trouble for the party in the North. In the combined vote of both houses, Southerners provided 61 percent of the aye votes and Northerners 91 percent of the nay votes. It was clearly a Southern victory, a “triumph of Slavery [and] Aristocracy over Liberty and Republicanism,” in the bitter words of a Northern newspaper.

The first governor of the territory, Andrew H. Reeder, a Pennsylvania Democrat, found that several thousand settlers had preceded him to Kansas.  In the fall of 1854 he called an election to choose a territorial delegate to Congress, and early in 1855 he called another election to name a territorial legislature.  But Kansas elections developed unusual features.  The Missouri counties which bordered Kansas on the east were strong proslavery areas, and the people in these counties, urged on by leaders like Senator Atchison, did not want a free-soil territory next door. Missourians by the hundreds swarmed across the border to Kansas to vote in the territorial elections.  The antislavery settlers, though apparently in the majority, were heavily out-voted.  On the face of the returns, the new territory had chosen a proslavery delegate to Congress and had elected a solidly proslavery legislature.  The legislature, in turn, at once adopted a stringent slave code, providing the death sentence for anyone who helped a fugitive slave to escape and a prison term for anyone who held that slavery was not legal in Kansas.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act inflamed opinions in both the North and South. Although popular sovereignty seemed a logical way of decided the fundamental issue of slavery in the territories, events showed that it did not work. One crucial question remained: When should settlers decided about slavery? Should they do so before the territory had an official government, after, or when the territory became a state? The question was never really settled. Instead, a minor war broke out in Kansas.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed May 1854. It did away with the Missouri Compromise line, since the territories could opt to allow slavery north of the 36°30'. Many northerners denounced the act. They were outraged that a restriction on the extension of slavery had been repealed.

After the Act went into effect, both proslavery and antislavery people raced to settle the Kansas Territory. Many of these "settlers" stayed just along enough to vote for the territory's new legislature, which would decide whether slavery would be allowed. "we are playing for a mighty stake," a southern senator said. "If we win, we carry slavery to the Pacific Ocean."

Alarmed by the growing number of northern settlers, bands of Missourians, labeled "border ruffians" by the Republican press, rode into Kansas prepared to vote as many times as necessary to install a proslavery government. In the fall of 1854 they cast at least 1,700 illegal ballots and sent a proslavery territorial delegate to Congress. When the time came for the election of a territorial legislature the following spring, even greater efforts were needed, for numerous Free Soil settlers had taken up claims during the winter. But Atchison was equal to the task. He led a contingent of border ruffians to Kansas for the election. "There are eleven hundred coming over from Platte County to vote," he told his followers, "and if that aint enough, we can send five thousand - enough to kill every God-damned abolitionist in the Territory."

His count was accurate. Five thousand was about the number who came - 4,986 to be precise, as determined by a congressional investigation - and voted illegally to elect a proslavery territorial legislature. The territorial governor appointed by President Pierce pleaded with Pierce to nullify the election. But Pierce listened to Atchison and fired the governor. Meanwhile, the new territorial legislature legalized slavery and adopted a slave code that even authorized the death penalty for helping a slave to escape. The legislature also declared valid all the ballots that has been cast in the lection that had created it.

The "free state" party, outraged by these proceedings, had no intention of obeying laws enacted by this "bogus legislature." By the fall of 1855 they constituted a majority of bona fide settlers in Kansas. So they called a convention, adopted a free-state constitution, and elected their own legislature and governor. By January 1856, on the even of a presidential election, two territorial governments in Kansas stood with their hands at each other's throats.