Kansas–Nebraska Act

“ The passage of the Fugitive-Slave Bill in 1850, followed by the virtual repeal of the Missouri Compromise, under the name of the Kansas Nebraska Act, in 1854, alarmed all sane people for the safety of republican institutions ”

“ It is noteworthy that this free-State movement originated in Democratic circles, under Democratic auspices. The Republican party did not yet exist. The opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act were distributed among Whigs, Know-Nothings, and Free-soilers in the States, and had no national affiliation, although they had won overwhelming triumphs in a majority of the Congressional districts in the fall elections of 1854. Nearly if not quite all the free-State leaders originally went to Kansas as friends of President Pierce, and as believers in the dogma of "Popular Sovereignty." ”

“ The States are the places for activity just now.'— (Life of Seward, Vol. 2, p. 232.) Yet many Whigs who were not devoted to machine politics saw clearly that a new party must be formed under a new name. They differed, however, in regard to their bond of union. Some wished to go to the country with simply Repeal of the Kansas-Nebraska act inscribed on their banner. Others wished to plant themselves squarely on prohibition of slavery in all the territories. ”

“ Kansas-Nebraska Act—A Slavery Triumph By the compromise measure of 1820 slavery was forever prohibited north of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude from the territory of the Louisiana purchase, except that portion included in the State of Missouri. As this Compromise was a Southern movement and maintained by Southern votes, it would seem that they were most fairly and solemnly bound to this compact. The opponents of slavery extension were bitterly opposed to the Compromise, because it yielded up the extensive domain of Missouri to slavery ”

“ They must build on a deeper foundation than Presidential elections, party majorities, or even than votes in the Senate. The theory of the government must be reversed, the philosophy of the republic interpreted anew. In this subtler effort they had made notable progress. By the Kansas-Nebraska act they had paralyzed the legislation of half a century. ”

“ Are not the laws that now stand upon the statute book of the nation, as the compromise measures of 1850, the same as they were in 1852, when they were endorsed by nearly 3,000,000 of votes—almost the unanimous vote of the nation? Is the law of the Kansas and Nebraska act, annulling the Missouri compromise line, a different law from what it was in 1856, when it was triumphantly sustained against Fremont and the Philadelphia platform? No man can say the laws are not the same. ”

“ Kansas-Nebraska Act.
An Act of Congress passed in 1854 by which Kansas and Nebraska were admitted to the Union as territories. This Act was a breach of the Missouri Compromise, as it left it to each of the new territories to settle the question of slavery within its borders.
Karl.
Among the Norsemen the holders of Odal or freehold land were so called.
Karmathians.
A Moslem sect, taking their name from Karmath, a disciple of Babek, whose leading tenets were the indifference of all human actions and the non-existence of private property. ”

“ Slavery must be kept out of Kansas! [Applause.] The test—the pinch—is right there. If we lose Kansas to freedom, an example will be set which will prove fatal to freedom in the end. We, therefore, in the language of the Bible, must "lay the axe to the root of the tree." Temporizing will not do longer; now is the time for decision—for firm, persistent, resolute action. [Applause.]
The Nebraska Bill, or rather Nebraska law, is not one of wholesome legislation, but was and is an act of legislative usurpation, whose result, if not indeed intention, is to make slavery national ”

“ But my purpose now is with the crime against Kansas, and I shall not stop to expose the conspiracy beyond.
Mr. President, men are wisely presumed to intend the natural consequences of their conduct, and to seek what their acts seem to promote. Now, the Nebraska bill, on its very face, openly cleared the way for slavery, and it is not wrong to presume that its originators intended the natural consequences of such an act, and sought in this way to extend slavery. ”

“ Despite all orders, reckless whites would squat upon, and thoughtless reds, bribed by whisky, tobacco, and gunpowder, would sell off the lands. On the 20th of May, 1854, was passed the celebrated "Kansas-Nebraska Bill," an act converting the greater portion of the "Indian Territory," and all the "Northwestern Territory," into two new territories—Kansas, north of the 37th parallel, and Nebraska, north of the 40th. In the passage of this bill, the celebrated "Missouri Compromise" of 1828, prohibiting negro slavery north of 36° 30', was repealed, under the presidency of General Pierce. ”

“ Who can wonder that in Kansas lawyers may not plead or juries be empannelled in the Federal Courts, nor can even citizens vote, without first swearing to support the Fugitive Slave Law and the Kansas and Nebraska act, while citizens who discuss through the press the right of slaveholders to domineer there, are punished with imprisonment or death; free bridges, over which citizens who advocate free institutions, may pass, free taverns where they may rest, and free presses through which they may speak, are destroyed under indictments for nuisances ”

“ From early in January, 1854, until late in May, Douglas's Nebraska bill held the attention of Congress and of the entire country. At first the measure simply assumed that the Missouri Compromise had been superseded by the Act of 1850. Later the bill was amended in such a way as to repeal distinctly that time-honored act. At first the plan was to organize Nebraska as a single Territory extending from Texas to Canada. Later it was proposed to organize separate Territories, one west of Missouri under the name of Kansas, the other west of Iowa under the name of Nebraska. ”

“ As, by the terms of the Kansas and Nebraska act, the people of those territories were to be left free to determine for themselves whether or not slavery should be tolerated there, a struggle soon began in Kansas, to which chiefly emigration was directed, between the anti-slavery and pro-slavery parties, which, after many acts of violence and a long period of confusion amounting almost to civil war, terminated in the adoption by the people of Kansas of a state constitution excluding slavery. ”

“ The law will triumph and the evil stop."
"We who pass this Kansas-Nebraska bill, both at the North and South, intend to maintain its principles. We do not intend to be driven from them by clamor nor by assault. We intend that the actual bona fide settlers of Kansas shall be protected in the full exercise of all the rights of freemen; that, unawed and uncontrolled, they shall freely and of their own will legislate for themselves, to every extent allowed by the Constitution, while they have a territorial government ”

“ It is being executed in the precise way which was intended from the first; else why does no Nebraska man express astonishment or condemnation? Poor Reeder is the only public man who has been silly enough to believe that any thing like fairness was ever intended; and he has been bravely undeceived.
That Kansas will form a slave constitution, and with it will ask to be admitted into the Union, I take to be already a settled question, and so settled by the very means you so pointedly condemn. By every principle of law ever held by any court, North or South, every negro taken to Kansas is free ”

“ Who denounces any man for diligently adhering to such constitutions? Who would dare to denounce any one for disloyalty to our existing constitutions, if they were constitutions of despotism and slavery? But it is supposed by some that this principle is less important in regard to Kansas and Nebraska than as a general one — a general principle applicable to all other present and future territories of the United States. ”

“ Direct legislation would have been preferable to indirect legislation, leading to the same result, and the enforcement of the restriction in the settlement of Kansas was virtually the abolition of slavery in Missouri. But Congress [pg 6] acted more wisely, as we think, and with greater fidelity to the Constitution and the Union.
The history of the Kansas-Nebraska bill is known to the country. ”

“ Any man who has sense enough to be the controller of his own property has too much sense to misunderstand the outrageous character of the whole Nebraska business. But I digress. In my opposition to the admission of Kansas, I shall have some company; but we may be beaten. If we are, I shall not, on that account, attempt to dissolve the Union. ”

“ Suddenly, without notice in the public press, or the prayer of a single petition, or one word of open recommendation from the President — after an acquiescence of thirty- three years, and the irreclaimable possession by the South of its special share under this compromise — in violation of every obligation of honor, compact, and good neighborhood — and in contemptuous disregard of the out-gushing sentiments of an aroused North, this time-honored prohibition, in itself a landmark of Freedom, was overturned, and the vast region now known as Kansas and Nebraska was opened to slavery. ”