[Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act]

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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION1

DISCUSSION1

Kansas-Nebraska Act1

The Compromise of 18503

CONCLUSION5

WORKS CITED6

Introduction

This paper will provide the comparison and contrast the Compromise of1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

The thesis statement of the paper is to explore how each of them attempted to satisfy different sectional interests.

Discussion

Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act introduced by Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas and passed by the U.S. Congress in 1854, shattered the national consensus over the spread of slavery in the territories that had prevailed since the Missouri Compromise of 1820, galvanized antislavery sentiment in the North, unleashed a wave of violence in the Kansas Territory, split the Democratic Party and destroyed the Whigs, and set the nation on a course that would lead to civil war seven years later.

Many historians believe that the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Acton May 30, 1854, was the single most important event pushing the United States on the road to the Civil War. This act superseded the Missouri Compromise and undid much of the Compromise of 1850. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act also had a major effect on the reconfiguration of America's political parties. It divided the Democratic Party, played an instrumental role in the demise of the Whig Party, and contributed to the rise of a new, exclusively Northern and antislavery party, the Republican Party. The passage of the act also triggered guerrilla fighting in Kansas (Holman, p. 579).

Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois played the single most important role in the formation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Douglas, serving as chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, used his position to promote the development of the western part of the United States. Douglas hoped that Western development would have a chastening influence upon the growing sectional enmities between the North and the South. Instead, it had the opposite effect. Congressional debate on the Kansas-Nebraska Act revealed great concern from Northerners and many Southerners. Debates raged over the legislation. Northerners argued that the act was too vague on when a vote on slavery ought to take place. Political parties were just as angry and just as divided as individuals and interest groups over the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Rozwenc, p. 102).

On March 3, 1854, the Senate voted 37 to 14 in favour of the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, with Southern Democrats and Whigs voting nearly in lockstep. However, in the House the story was quite different. Alexander H. Stephens, the future vice president of the Confederacy, brought 13 Southern Whig representatives across party lines and assured the passage of the act on May 22, when the House voted 113-100 in favor of the bill.Northern Whigs of both houses had generally opposed the bill. In fact, a large portion of the Northern Whig Party had hoped to convince Southern Whigs to oppose the bill as well. The Whigs hoped to generate a Whig "renaissance" in 1856 and perhaps even to recapture the White House. These hopes were extremely unrealistic, for they failed to take into account that for a Southern Whig ...