Through the 19th century a lot of conflicts and disputes happened in slavery. Generally, the Missouri Compromise and Louisiana Purchase are the topics you hear about these the most because of the global effect it had on the nation at their respected times. One moment in history that isn’t being discussed in grade school enough is the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was the incredible plan but epic failure of bills that were passed in the 1800s. In January of 1854, this act was put in to fix and separate the sectional territories.
The senator of Illinois, Stephen Douglas played a major role in the majority part of the public issues in the mid-1800s. He desired “to ensure a northern transcontinental railroad route that would benefit his Illinois constituents, introduced a bill to organize the territory of Nebraska in order to bring the area under civil control. Urging the solution to the circumstances of the extension of slavery in the territories behind the force the Kansas-Nebraska in 1854”. Then popular sovereignty as introduced as it emerged as a compromise strategy for determining whether a Western territory would permit or prohibit slavery. It was promoted in the 1840s as a “response to debates over western expansion, popular sovereignty argued that in a democracy, residents of a territory, and not the federal government, should be allowed to decide on slavery within their borders”. With introducing popular sovereignty, Douglas “coined the term, thought the settlers should vote on their status early in territorial development.” As he made up and sent out a plan to congress that was to build a railroad that would travel and go through Illinois to the Western Frontier. The railroad route would have traveled through the unsettled territories of Kansas and Nebraska and the plan was to turn those unsettled territories them into states.
At the time Kansas and Nebraska Act made the states both open to slavery. Douglas strongly made the attempt to get northerners and southerners to support his plan by organizing the two territories so the choice of having slavery in those states. The popular vote would be left up to the people. “However, until the area was organized as a territory, settlers would not move there because they could not legally hold a claim on the land. The southern states’ representatives in Congress were in no hurry to permit a Nebraska territory because the land lay north of the 36°30′, where slavery had been outlawed by the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Southerners used this plan and heavily supported it, because it would argue the fact that free states would cut all slavery ties everywhere. Douglas said “he wanted to see Nebraska made into a territory and, to win southern support, proposed a southern state inclined to support slavery.”
Involving the political actions that were transpiring, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, allowed residents of Kansas determine whether the state would be slave or free. With that happening it sparked a violent struggle between pro-slavery and anti-slavery forces. Pro-slavery and Anti-Slavery forces traveled to Kansas which cause the outbreak called the Bleeding Kansas. The Bleeding “foreshadowed the violence that would ensue over the future of slavery.” It also spurred a major party realignment. The Democratic Party ended up dividing along sectional lines, while the Whig party and Free-Soil Party closed, which gave, the Act gave rise to the Republican Party. members of the Free-Soil Party, and assorted abolitionists who opposed the extension of slavery into the territories. The Republican Party became a solid northern political organization, by creating a binary party system that would reflect the sectional fault lines along the questions and future in which it would be the pursuit or end of slavery.
Kansas-Nebraska Act impacted the nation quietly, but dramatically by really having a huge dispute. So big that two forces who strongly believe in what they believed in traveled to a neutral territory and killed one another for it. Nothing was solved which showed why it was an epic failure.