The Importance Of The Kansas-Nebraska Act

2040 Words5 Pages

In 1854 President Pierce signed the Kansas-Nebraska act, which formed the territories of Kansas and Nebraska. The act effectively nullified the Missouri compromise of 1820, and gave the two new territories an opportunity to choose, through popular vote, whether they would permit or outlaw slavery. Southern slave holders viewed the act as a chance to spread slavery into the new territories and Northern free-staters saw a means to end it. Pro and anti-slavery advocates poured into the new territory of Kansas to help sway the vote in their favor. The stage was set for democracy to act, the people could choose, and they chose violence. Not a year after the act was signed Kansas turned bloody and the infamous “Bleeding Kansas” began. The issue of …show more content…

We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give the victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right.” Seward predicted the future, though he didn’t mean in it a literal sense, nonetheless his prophesy came true, battle soon raged in Kansas. David Potter claims that, “Instead of settling a controversy, the adoption of the act transplanted the controversy from the halls of Congress to the plains of Kansas. The forces which had fought one another so fiercely in Washington continued to fight beyond the wide Missouri.” Shortly thereafter the Massachusetts Emigrant Aid Company, purchased a charter with capital stock of $5 million, to assist emigrants to settle the West. These emigrants were northerners, and generally anti-slavery. Technically New Englanders began the struggle for Kansas by organizing and pushing large groups of northerners into Kansas. Many southerners viewed this as an invasion against slavery, and thus large droves of Missourians poured into …show more content…

She argues that both sides fought for their perceived liberties. Southerners felt that not only was their property at risk, slaves, but their way of life. The success of the anti-slavery movement spelled the doom of southern society. While northerners felt that slavery offered unfair competition to labor and represented a backwards way of life that was in direct contention with the liberties that the founding fathers outlined in the constitution. To Etcheson, this caused both sides to turn a vote for popular sovereignty into a full-fledged war rife with murder and atrocities committed by both side sides of the

Open Document