Kansas-Nebraska Act

Tensions were to reach a new high when Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed to organize the Kansas and Nebraska territories on the basis of popular sovereignty. He did so to appeal to the Southerners while the Northerners were outraged because this would repeal the line set by the Missouri Compromise.

Douglas proposed this bill largely out of personal interest. He wanted to open up the territory to railway expansion and make available land for settlement and trade. Also, as a Democrat, he thought this spirit of expansion would revive and unite the Democratic party, who had earlier in the century been under the banner of Manifest Destiny. All this, he hoped, would eventually gain him the presidency. However, while the bill was passed in both the Senate and the House, half of the northern Democrats voted against the bill, and Douglas' bill destroyed any sectional consensus left. Other political side effects were the dissolution of the Whigs and the eventual creation of the Republican Party.

Stephen A. Douglas

Divine, Robert A., T. H. Breen, George M. Fredrickson, and R. Hal Williams. America Past and Present. Revised Sixth Edition, AP* Edition . Addison-Wesley Educational Publishers Inc., 2003. 398-99. Print.

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