Kansas/Nebraska acts initial research

I. BASICS
a. bill became law on May 30th, 1854 designed by Stephen A. Douglas
b. Kansas and Nebraska territories established by congress
1. Kansas and Nebraska: west of Iowa and Mississippi + Platte Rivers
c. Problems: slavery and transcontinental railroad
II. Leading decisions up to Kansas/Nebraska acts and causes
a. Before: MO compromise of 1820, compromise of 1850
b. Why: realized it would be good for farming (land they once gave to NAs
b/c they thought it was desert)
c. 4 previous attempts to create one big territory but not supported b/c of
south’s hatred towards MO. Compromise
d. Two territories, not one was enabled by Chairman of Committee on
Territories in Senate, also IL. Democratic senator, Stephen A. Douglas’s
bill in Jan. 1854 in which popular sovereignty was established
e. Contradicted MO. Compromise (in which the natural inference was one
would be free and one would be slave)
III. Effects
a. Republican party formed by people opposed to bill
b. Bleeding Kansas, Emigrant Aid company, hypotheses about a cause of the
Civil War
IV. Opinions about the acts (use of primary sources here)
a. Opposition
1. Political cartoon
2. The Crime against Kansas
3. Eli Thayer and the Kansas Crusade (wanted to get Kansas in the
Union as a free state)
b. republican vs. democratic views
c. Any support besides Congress? (I’m sure there was I just haven’t found it
yet)
-Original text: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/kanneb.htm
-http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/history/A0827030.html
-Interactive map site:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/neh/interactives/sectionalism/lesson3/
-great website and links that map out a teaching plan:
http://www.teachushistory.org/kansas-nebraska-act-bleeding-kansas/overview

Primary sources (ideas):

1. Forcing Slavery down the throat of a freesoiler (see cartoon below)

2. THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS:

THE APOLOGIES FOR THE CRIME:
THE TRUE REMEDY.CHARLES SUMNER,of Massachusetts,In the Senate of the United
States, May 18, 1856.

http://facweb.furman.edu/%7Ebenson/docs/sumnerksh2.htm
blames democrats for the Kansas/Nebraska acts.
“MURDER!!! Help—neighbors help. O my poor Wife and Children,” Freesoiler.
Right: presidential nominee James Buchanan and Democratic senator Lewis Cass
Left: Stephen A. Douglas and President Franklin Pierce