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Kansas-Nebraska Act: Missouri Compromise
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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was the third and last of the series of compromises enacted before the U.S. Civil War in an attempt to resolve the question of whether slavery should be permitted in the western territories. Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, drafted the legislation that revoked the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had banned slavery north of 36°30' latitude. Douglas applied the doctrine of popular sovereignty to the Kansas and Nebraska Territories, as he had successfully urged Congress to do in the Compromise of 1850. The 1850 law left to New Mexico and Utah the decision of whether to enter the Union as free or slave states.
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With the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, the stage was set for murderous mob rule in the territory of Kansas. The act pitted Northern abolitionists against proslavery Southerners and undermined any chance of compromise.
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Most of the white settlers who came to Kansas following the Kansas -Nebraska act were looking for better economic opportunities. Many came from Missouri, as well as the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio River Valley and upper South regions. They found a land with extreme weather conditions and many left after suffering through the hot summers, harsh winters and a drought in 1859-60. Those who remained found themselves involved in the controversy over whether Kansas would become a free or slave state.
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The KansasÐNebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. The Act allowed Kansas and Nebraska to determine whether they wished to be slave or free states. Nebraska was not problematic, as its settlers favored the status of free state. However, the status of Kansas was bitterly fought over.
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Douglas backed a compromise called the Kansas-Nebraska Act. This act allowed slave states above the Missouri Compromise Line. It ... said that the fate of these territories was in the hands of the voters (popular sovereignty).
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The 1850s were years of increasing dissension, worsened by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 that set slave- and free-state advocates at one another's throats for control of those adjoining territories. Missouri already was moving toward a free-state economy... and the state stayed within the Union during the Civil War.
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Missouri Compromise