Kansas–Nebraska Act

And so it also required states in the free states to assist in the capture and return of escaped slaves back to the south.

if needed, so it did not solve every slave issue, temporarily reduced some political tensions, but there was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Dred Scott decision, and the Civil War, and all that stuff still coming, and it wasn't until the 16th president, your favorite president, before things started really getting resolved, and even then, He didn't have the power that he thought that he had.

The California Gold Rush was underway during his presidency, 1849-1850, and he supported the construction of a national library in Washington, D.C.

He was very interested in education and the establishment of what became the University of Buffalo.

The collapse of this second party system was at the center of increasing regional tensions that would lead to the birth of the Republican Party, the rise of Abraham Lincoln as its leader, and a civil war that would claim over half a million lives.

And if this collapse could be blamed on a single event, it would be the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854.

The story starts with the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

To balance the number of slave states and free states in the Union, it allowed slavery in the newly admitted state of Missouri while making it off-limits in the remaining federally administered Louisiana Territory.

It would divide the large chunk of incorporated land into two new organized territories, Nebraska and Kansas, each of which would be open to slavery if the population voted to allow it.

While Douglas and his Southern supporters tried to frame the bill as protecting the political rights of settlers, horrified Northerners recognized it as repealing the 34-year-old Missouri Compromise and feared that its supporters' ultimate goal was to extend slavery to the entire nation.

Congress was able to pass the Kansas–Nebraska Act, but at the huge cost of bitterly dividing the nation, with 91% of the opposition coming from Northerners.

In the House of Representatives, politicians traded insults and brandished weapons until a sergeant at arms restored order.

But that was in 1849.

Five years later, The Kansas-Nebraska Act opens the territory to white settlement, and people rush in from the South, from Missouri, from the North, from Ohio and New York.

And Kansas really does explode in the 1850s and becomes the epicenter of this political fight over whether or not slavery would stay where it was in the Southern states, or whether it would expand into places like Kansas territory where it was supposed to have been banned.

way back in the Missouri Compromise of 1820.

So Lincoln gets back into the game, back on the trail, denouncing the Kansas-Nebraska Act, forming a new Republican Party to stop slavery's expansion.

That's Kansas the idea.

Lincoln also decided to come to Kansas the place in 1859 at the invitation of a, I think he was a cousin of his mother, Nancy Hanks, Mark Delahaye, who was a journalist in Kansas and an early Lincoln supporter.

And when that happens, and there's often something very dramatic that makes people see that that's happening.

In the 1850s, it was the Kansas-Nebraska Act, for example.

The 1890s, it's the rise of the robber barons and especially the, never mind.

There are specific things.

He was wrong.

The Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The Fatal Mistake.

The defining event of Pierce's presidency was the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

It was proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, who wanted to organize western territories to build a transcontinental railway.

The act repealed the Missouri Compromise, which had banned slavery north of a certain line.