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The Kansas-Nebraska Act

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act
Kansas-Nebraska Act The creation of the Kansas-Nebraska Act also known as “Popular Sovereignty” caused major conflict because of the such opposite views of people. The act caused a deeper divide between the South and North, lead to the rise of Abraham Lincoln, and Bleeding Kansas.
Slave owners living in Missouri did not want people to Kansas and Nebraska to become free states and if the Missouri Compromise stayed than both states would become free states, because they are both above the longitude line that decides if a state is a slave owning state or not. If both states became free states than Missouri might have been forced to change from slave owning state to free but the people from Missouri in government did not allow the development
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Stephen A. Douglas created the Kansas-Nebraska Act because if he wanted Nebraska as a state so he could build a railroad that would make Chicago a hub for trading but southern states did not want to because it would come in as a free state and so he said that people of the Kansas and Nebraska could decide if they want to the state to be a slave owning state or not and called it “Popular Sovereignty.” Abraham Lincoln decided to come out of “retirement” and so object this idea publicly saying that people should not be offered the choice to own slaves. To prevent the expansion of slavery it needs to be completely banned and he also said the idea is good theoretically but people are not good enough morally and argued for the humanity of the slaves (Monroe …show more content…
With settlers from New England and settlers from Missouri, Kentucky, and other Southern states (Price) different beliefs led to riots. John Brown led a raid on a pro-slavery farm where the settlers were beat to death by corn knives (Price). In 1856, a group of proslavery settlers attacked Lawrence. They burned down buildings, looted stores, destroyed two newspaper buildings, and brutally beat citizens of the city (Sacking of Lawrence, Kansas). By 1858, Kansas was basically at war with itself; Guerrilla warfare was the tactic of the settlers. (Price). All of the riots and raids were a direct cause of the Kansas-Nebraska

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