Slavery And The Kansas-Nebraska Act

2 Pages 536 Words

The question of slavery within the new states becomes the foregrounds for what began to divide early America into numerous groups that not only held different views but also possessed hostility towards one another. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 stirred up much concern and immediately divided America into several proslavery and antislavery groups. America was so carefully divided that people remained extremely passionate and extremely desperate to fight for their particular beliefs. The compromise of 1850 searched for a way to mend the nation but instead it helped keep the nation separated.
The massive outward migration from the North and South to the new territories of America brought about an enormous problem that required a solution. Would the new territories be slave states or free states? The Gadsden Purchase of almost 30,000 square miles added to the United States geographically and problematically. At first it was thought that half of the territory would be free and the other half would be slave. Kansas would be free and Nebraska would be slave. It wasn’t as easy as it seemed because outraged Northerners called Nebraska an “atrocious plot” to make a “dreary region despotism inhabited by masters and slaves” (Berkin p. 403). Berkin exemplifies the severity of the dissimilarities between the beliefs of the North and the South.
The ideologies of the North and the South are not moral decisions empowered by humanity, they are material decisions fueled by economic interest. The North does not want the South to have the benefit of slave plantations because this is a remarkable advantage economically and the South does not want their extremely lucrative slave plantations to be compromised. If only this problem could have been foreseen then maybe conflict could have been spared.
The Kansas Nebraska act passes a law that allows residents of Kansas And Nebraska to decide whether to allow slavery or not within the states. Th...