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Essay On The Kansas Nebraska Act Of 1854

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was a bill that gave the settlers of the territory, Kansas and Nebraska, to decide whether slavery would be allowed or not. The bill proposed by Stephen A. Douglas, overruled the Missouri Compromise (a compromise that Missouri entered the Union as a slave state but slavery would be forbidden anywhere else in the Louisiana Purchase North of 36* 30’), a boundary between the free and the slave states. This bill split two major political parties at that time; which were: the Whig Party and the Democratic Party, but also helped on the unification of the Republican Party. The Democratic Party was split into two; the Northern and the Southern side. Northern Democrats assumed that under this bill, slavery would never actually expand into the territories. They believe popular sovereignty would hold the land for the North. However, Southern Democrats believe that popular sovereignty would permit and protect slavery in the territories. Sothern’s believed that slaveholders had the same right as non-slaveholders to bring their property, including slaves, into the territories. When the Democratic Party had a convention in South Carolina, the Southern Democrats insisted that the party secures the rights of slaveholders to enter the territories. …show more content…

Most southern Whigs supported the act while Northern Whigs strongly opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. The southern members nearly all owned slaves, while the northeastern Whigs represented businessmen who didn’t much care about slavery but didn’t want it to expand. There was no compromise that could keep the Whigs united; most of the southern Whigs soon went to the Democratic Party and the Northern Whigs reorganized themselves with other non-slavery interests and became the Republican Party. Thus, the end of the Whig Party and the creation of the Republican

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