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The Kansas-Nebraska Act and party realignment

The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in 1854, reopened the debate over the expansion of slavery  in the United States.

Overview

  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act organized two new territories in the land acquired through the Louisiana Purchase, Kansas and Nebraska. The act established that in these territories, the principle of popular sovereignty would apply, meaning that the white residents of each territory would vote on whether to permit slavery when applying for statehood.
  • The Act repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which drew the horizontal line of slavery across the West along the 36° 30' parallel, as both Kansas and Nebraska were north of this line. This reopened the question of slavery’s western expansion.
  • The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act induced party realignment and violence, furthering the sectional divide that ultimately erupted in the Civil War.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act and popular sovereignty

In 1854, an uproar regarding the question of slavery in the territories challenged the relative calm after the Compromise of 1850. The pressure on this question came primarily from northern farmers, who wanted the federal government to survey the land west of Iowa and Missouri and put it up for sale. Promoters of a transcontinental railroad also pushed for this westward expansion.
Furthermore, many in the South were growing resentful of the Missouri Compromise, which established the 36° 30' parallel as the geographical boundary of slavery. Slaveholders entrenched themselves in defense of their “way of life,” which depended on the ownership of slaves, while also claiming that prohibiting slavery’s expansion ran counter to basic American property rights. They now contended that the question should be decided by popular sovereignty, or allowing the white residents of a territory to decide whether it should permit slavery when it applied for statehood.
Meanwhile, some antislavery northerners wanted the West reserved for poor whites to seek opportunity. Abolitionists, too, were becoming more vocal in their support for the complete end of slavery.
Democratic leaders sought to bind these disparate ideologies together. Illinois Democratic senator Stephen Douglas believed he had found a solution—the Kansas-Nebraska bill—that would promote party unity and also appease Southerners who detested the Missouri Compromise line. The act created two territories: Kansas, directly west of Missouri; and Nebraska, west of Iowa. The act applied the principle of popular sovereignty. Since both territories fell above the 36° 30' line, the proposed bill would repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820.
A map showing the outcome of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. After the act passed Congress, the territories of Kansas and Nebraska were allowed to decide whether they wanted slavery.
After heated debates—many members carried a concealed revolver or a knife to the sessions—Congress narrowly passed the act.

Party realignment

The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed residents of Kansas to determine whether the state would be slave or free, sparked a violent struggle between proslavery and antislavery factions, both of whom flooded into the territory hoping to gain enough votes for their side to triumph. It also spurred a major party realignment.
Since the 1830s, the two main political parties in the United States had been the Democratic Party and the Whig Party. The parties disagreed mainly about economic policy. Whigs advocated for accelerated economic growth, often endorsing federal government projects to achieve that goal. Democrats wanted the federal government to play a smaller role in regulating the economy. Whigs tended to be wealthier; they were prominent planters in the South and wealthy urban northerners--in other words, the beneficiaries of the market revolution. Democrats presented themselves as defenders of the common people against the elite.
The issue of slavery began to crack the foundations of the Second Party System in the 1840s. The Kansas-Nebraska Act divided the Democratic Party along sectional lines, as half of the northern Democrats in the House voted against it. In 1848, the newly-formed Free Soil Party nominated former president Martin Van Buren and ran on an antislavery platform of “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men.”
The Democrats divided along sectional lines as a result of the bill, and the Whig party, in decline in the early 1850s, found its political power slipping further. Most important, the Kansas-Nebraska Act gave rise to the Republican Party, a new political party that attracted northern Whigs, Democrats who shunned the Kansas-Nebraska Act, members of the Free-Soil Party, and assorted abolitionists.
As a result, the Republican Party became a solidly northern political organization, creating a new binary party system reflecting sectional fault lines along the question of slavery.

What do you think?

Imagine you were a Northern abolitionist when the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed. How would you respond?
Explain how the two-party system shifted at the end of the 1850s.
How did the new party system differ geographically from the Second Party System?

Want to join the conversation?

  • aqualine seed style avatar for user William Janis
    Did John Brown's murder of five men near Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas eventually lead to Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859? Then, a Federal court would convict Brown and sentence him to death.
    (21 votes)
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    • spunky sam blue style avatar for user Brady W.
      In a nutshell, yes. The murders at Pottawatomie were part of the escalation of tensions in "Bleeding Kansas" that eventually lead to Brown deciding to attempt to raid the Federal Armory at Harper's Ferry. He envisioned a liberation movement for enslaved African Americans, and he figured that the best way to arm them would be to take out the Armory. He wasn't successful in the raid, and was subsequently captured by a contingent of US Marines led by Robert E. Lee. After which he was tried & convicted of treason in the Commonwealth of Virginia, and executed by hanging.
      (34 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user Reynaldo412
    What were the end results of Kansas and Nebraska when it came to being a slave free state or a state which highly encouraged slavery?
    (11 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Carolina
    how did the two-party system change after 1850?
    (8 votes)
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  • old spice man green style avatar for user Kiki Jones
    Did senator Preston Brooks attend the speech and attack Charles Sumner right after the speech or did he travel to Charles Sumner to attack him? And if he did not attend the speech do you think that his plan was to attack Charles Sumner when he got there?
    (8 votes)
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  • aqualine sapling style avatar for user Emburr
    I'm surprised they let people bring guns to the debates
    (8 votes)
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  • piceratops seedling style avatar for user Alexander Perez
    Why are the southerners are intent to keep slavery as a means to survive?
    (5 votes)
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    • starky seedling style avatar for user Parker Blacklock
      The institution of slavery was like a parasite. It grew by leeching off of the Southern agricultural economy, causing damage to anyone that wasn't one of the top slave owning families; However, the parasite was so ingrained in the economy that a sudden removal would cause tremendious immediate damage -despite industrialization being a plausible long term alternative- that the top families saw as a threat to their fortunes and political power. As such, many of these families used said power to garner support from the Southern public, as well as to influence political decisions that would favor slavery.
      (4 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user John.Michael.Hulsey.3
    Was Senator Preston Brooks arrested for the attack?
    (5 votes)
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  • sneak peak blue style avatar for user 🅻🅸🅶🅷🆃BENDER
    Who created the Free Soil Party? Why were they even called that? Also, who were some major supporters of the party?
    (2 votes)
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    • male robot hal style avatar for user Stephen White
      Salmon P. Chase (Lawyer and Supreme Court Justice) was one of the most prominent members of the Free Soil Party. Former President Martin Van Buren became a candidate for president on this ticket. Also taking part were Walt Whitman and Frederick Douglas among many others. There are many other names of prominent people and organizers.

      They were called the Free Soil Party because they were a single issue party that opposed the expansion of slavery to the western areas of the country.

      Third political parties can be an interesting study and many of them have contributed to the culture of the day. For instance, a couple of parties contributed to the creation of The Wizard of Oz, and the themes of that story.
      (5 votes)
  • blobby green style avatar for user 21tierraza
    The federal government during this time needed money to build what?
    (3 votes)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user edumgui5448
    Did John Brown's murder of five men near Pottawatomie Creek, in Kansas eventually lead to Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry.
    (3 votes)
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