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Doc of the Day: The Kansas-Nebraska Act
05/30/10
The Kansas-Nebraska Act, which gave voters in Kansas and Nebraska the power to decide whether to allow slavery in those territories, was signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30, 1854. It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in the region, and instead attempted to settle the question of the expansion of slavery by popular sovereignty.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act received widespread support in the pro-slavery South but was met with a storm of protest and indignation in the North. Within a few months of its passage, pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces rushed into Kansas in hopes of influencing the outcome of the vote, and violence erupted between the two sides. Conflict over the Kansas-Nebraska Act increased the sectional tensions that eventually plunged the nation into the Civil War.
Read the KANSAS-NEBRASKA ACT
Read the MISSOURI COMPROMISE