Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854)

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed by Congress in 1854, created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, allowing settlers in these areas to determine through popular sovereignty whether they would allow slavery there. The act arose from proposals in the early 1850s, for the construction of a transcontinental railroad to link the eastern United States with the Pacific Coast. However, there were disagreements on exactly where the railroad should be built. One of the contenders as the eastern terminus was Chicago, which had the backing of Stephen A. Douglas, the prominent Illinois senator who was also chair of the Senate Committee on Territories. However, Douglas's proposed route could not be viable unless the land along which the railroad traveled was organized into official territories.

At the same time, the area that eventually became the state of Kansas had sufficient population to enable it to apply for admission to the Union. This injected into the western territories the recurring question of slavery. Would this new state be a “free” state or a “slave” state? Since the territory in which Kansas was located was part of the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, it was subject to the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Under that agreement, any states admitted to the Union in the future were to be “free” if they were above the southern boundary of Missouri or “slave” if they were below that line. Thus, Kansas ought to be free.

Southerners, however, vehemently opposed this. For a generation, the Missouri Compromise had worked well, with each free state being offset with the admission of a slave state, but in 1850 California entered the Union as a free state, giving the north two more votes in the U.S. Senate than the south. With no other southern areas ready for admission in the near future, southerners hoped to have Kansas admitted as a slave state to restore the balance of power in the Senate.