Kansas-Nebraska Act
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a bill presented by US Senator Stephen A. Douglas in January 1854 to create the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska .
Thereafter, the northern part of the colony Louisiana (see Louisiana Purchase ) acquired by the French government should be divided into two territories, with Nebraska in the north and Kansas in the south. The (white) inhabitants should decide for themselves about the slave question. This law caused bloody battles in Kansas between opponents and supporters of slavery in 1856 , which came to be known as Bleeding Kansas , and which almost led to civil war. The background to this was the Missouri Compromise , which has now been declared unconstitutional and, among other things, had banned slavery north of the 36th parallel.
On February 28, 1854, the Republican Party emerged from the opponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act under the leadership of Abraham Lincoln . The US Congress passed the law despite protests and after heated debates; President Franklin Pierce signed it on May 30, 1854.
literature
- Debra McArthur: The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Bleeding Kansas in American History ; ISBN 0-7660-1988-8 (English).
- James A. Rawley: Race and Politics: "Bleeding Kansas" and the Coming of the Civil War . University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1979, ISBN 0-8032-3854-1 .