Effects of Kansas - Nebraska Act

After the Compromise of 1850, was there more territory open to slavery or territory closed to slavery?

• territory open to slavery (slave)
• territory closed to slavery (free)

The 1854 Kansas – Nebraska Act ended the 1820 Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept the territory north of Missouri’s southern border as free. Why did northerner Stephen Douglas come up with the 1854 Kansas Nebraska Act?

• Because the southerners wanted the transcontinental railroad to go through the South and the North wouldn’t agree
• Because the northerners wanted the transcontinental railroad to go through the North and the South wouldn’t agree

Stephen Douglas’s plan, the Kansas Nebraska Act, ended the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept northern territory free. Why were some northerners mad that the Missouri Compromise was no longer a law?

• Slavery might be voted into areas that were once supposed to be free
• Northerners were afraid that Michigan would become a slave state

Stephen Douglas’s plan, the Kansas Nebraska Act ended the Missouri Compromise. The Missouri Compromise kept northern territory free. Why did many southerners want to end the Missouri Compromise?

• Slavery might be voted into areas that were once going to be free
• The Missouri Compromise abolished slavery everywhere in the USA

What was it about Franklin Pierce that many northerners and southerners voted for him to become president?

• He was from the north AND he supported the Fugitive Slave Law
• He was from California and grew cotton

What is popular sovereignty?

• Having people vote to decide the rules or laws
• Having the state courts decide laws and rules

What did Texas Senator Sam Houston predict when he said that the bill “will convulse the country from Maine to the Rio Grande”?

• That there was no more compromise, only fighting
• That the Rio Grande would be the border of Maine

Who were "border ruffians"?

• Thousands of pro-slavery supporters from Missouri had crossed the border just to vote in the election.
• People who left Kansas because they were afraid of the violence

The Kansas Nebraska Act used voting to decide if Kansas was free or slave. What happened in that vote/election?

• No one showed up to vote because they did not believe in democracy
• Border Ruffians from Missouri crossed into Kansas and voted illegally

What happened in May of 1856 in response to the election/ voting in Kansas to decide the question of free or slave?

• John Bell was elected president because everyone thought that his Constitutional Union party was just what the USA needed
• Pro-slavery people attacked an anti-slavery Kansas town; anti-slavery people then attacked the pro-slavery people; civil war