Irrepressible Conflicts Kansas-Nebraska Act Stephen Douglas may have hoped that the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 would resolve the issue of slavery in the territories, but that legislation unleashed a torrent of violence and invective. As blood flowed in Kansas and on the floor of the United States Senate, political rhetoric sharpened and political party realignment indicated a further erosion of a middle ground. If popular sovereignty would not work, what choices were left? Video: Bleeding Kansas As western expansion continued, so too did the issue of slavery in new territories. This video analyzes the causes and consequences of Stephen Douglas' Kansas-Nebraska Act. Look for answers to these questions when watching the video: What were Stephen Douglas' motives for introducing the Kansas-Nebraska Act? What were the terms of this legislation? How did it affect Indian peoples in the region? Why did the act include a repeal of the Missouri Compromise line? How did the events associated with "Bleeding Kansas" affect that area and the rest of the nation? Why did "popular sovereignty" fail in Kansas? What was the significance of that failure? Video script: Music introduction Narrator: The Compromise of 1850 had put off the question of slavery in the territories for a few years. But the lure of the West was irresistible. By 1854, Americans were clamoring for new lands to be opened for settlement, and Kansas and Nebraska were first in line. With his Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas, who would ultimately engineer the passage of
The Compromise of 1850, became the unwitting engineer of its collapse. Douglas was a tireless advocate of western expansion. As chairman of the senate committee on territories, he was eager to organize the Nebraska territory so that it could be opened for settlement. A man of small stature and enormous ambition, Douglas was nicknamed The Little Giant. Actor, Thomas Hart Benton: He thinks he can bestride this continent with one foot on the shore of the Atlantic, the other on the Pacific. But he can t do it he can t do it. His legs are too short. Narrator: In the 1850s, westward expansion was a dream shared by many Americans. Northerners of the free soil, free labor persuasion wanted western lands opened to homesteaders. Southerners were looking for opportunities to expand the dominion of slavery in the Western territories. Neither North nor South was concerned about the Indian lands that lay in their path. Robert Johannsen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: The Kansas-Nebraska Act in effect opened up this plains area to settlement by farmers and whoever which meant they were encroaching on Indian lands. So what had to be done with the passage of the Kansas- Nebraska Act was a renegotiation of all of the treaties, which was done in the latter 1850s, pushing the Indians and the reservations north to what are now the Dakotas and south into what is now Oklahoma. Narrator: Douglas was not concerned with the sovereignty of the Indian nations, and regarded them as little more than an obstacle to progress. But he believed in the popular sovereignty of white settlers. To this end, he drafted a bill which would organize two territories-- Kansas and Nebraska-- and allow the question of slavery in each territory to be decided by its inhabitants. Robert Johanssen: He was dedicated or committed to this notion of popular sovereignty. He felt that was the only way to treat the slavery issue. Now he could take that attitude and still maintain a kind of antislavery view because he knew
that slaveholders were not the ones who are migrating to Kansas, Nebraska, Utah, New Mexico and so forth. The people who were migrating came from the free states. Slave-owners were not uprooting their plantations and moving them to Kansas. Robert Johanssen: He also thought that popular sovereignty was a middle ground. He felt it would bring peace to the two sections. He was very wrong about that. Narrator: The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act provoked a storm of reaction across the country. As the man responsible for the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Stephen Douglas was vilified. Robert Johanssen: Especially the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused a vicious opposition. First of all in Congress, where Douglass was charged with all kinds of heinous things. Down on his knees before the slave power and all of this sort of thing. And Douglas returned to Chicago after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in the summer of 1854 and he said when he got to Chicago, he could have traveled by the light of his burning effigies all the way by train from Washington to Chicago. Narrator: Once the bill was passed, the battle over slavery in the territories moved from the relatively controlled halls of congress to the open ground of Kansas. Actor, William Seward: We will engage in competition for the virgin soil of Kansas, and God give victory to the side which is stronger in numbers as it is in right. Narrator: While the North was sending large numbers of emigrants to Kansas, the South was gathering its forces in Missouri. At the first election, several thousand pro-slavery men crossed the border into Kansas and voted. The outcome of the election was overwhelmingly proslavery. But at least sixty percent of the votes were illegal. Free-staters elected a government of their own, which established itself in the city of Lawrence, Kansas. In response, a territorial court judge sent a federal marshal with a posse to arrest the free-state leaders for treason. The posse degenerated into a mob, and the town of Lawrence was sacked its buildings burned, its homes looted, and its inhabitants terrorized. Three days later, John Brown, a northern abolitionist, took vengeance for the sack of Lawrence. Estimating that five anti-slavery settlers had been killed thus far in Kansas, he selected five pro-
slavery men at random from a settlement at Pottawatomie Creek, and had them executed by his small band of followers. While border ruffians and bushwhackers fought it out in bleeding Kansas, senators and congressmen fought a war of words in Washington. But even there the rhetoric brought bloodshed. After Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts gave an anti-slavery speech, a representative from South Carolina named Preston Brooks beat him senseless with a cane on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Southerners congratulated Brooks by sending him more canes. Politics in Kansas became more complicated as the territory prepared to apply for statehood. Free soilers and Republicans abstained from some elections, while pro-slavery Democrats abstained from others, and both sides stuffed ballot boxes. As delegates to a constitutional convention were preparing a constitution that legalized slavery, voters in the election of 1857 elected an anti-slavery legislature. Robert Johannsen: The Lecompton constitution was the effort on the part of the slave power to bring Kansas into the union as a slave state while they still could, while the population was still in flux. And Douglas saw that as such a travesty, a blow against popular sovereignty that although it was passed with and promoted by a democratic president and by democratic leaders from the South, Douglas opposed the Lecompton constitution. Narrator: Congress refused to ratify the Lecompton constitution and returned it to the voters. This time, with election controls in place, the free soilers defeated it. Stephen Douglas was a man ensnared in his own web. Popular sovereignty had failed to maintain the peace in Kansas. In fact, it had provoked a guerrilla war, and delayed statehood for years. More importantly, the Kansas-Nebraska Act destroyed any pretense of harmony between the North and South. The gloves were off, and they would not be put back on again. Actor, Atlanta Newspaper Editorial: We regard every man who does not boldly declare that he believes African slavery to be a social, moral, and political blessing as an enemy to the institutions of the South.
Actor, Theodore Parker: The South I must say it is the enemy of the North. She is the enemy of our material welfare and our spiritual development. Her success is our ruin. End of video. Video: A New Party This video examines the shifting political realignment of the 1850s, highlighted by the emergence of a new sectional party, the Republicans. Look for answers to these questions when watching the video: Why did the Kansas-Nebraska Act prompt a restructuring of the political party system? Why did the Whig Party die? What was important about that? Why did some northern Democrats have difficulty with the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Why was the Republican Party successful in attracting supporters in the North? How successful were the Republicans in the 1856 presidential election? What did this portend? Video script: Music introduction Narrator: The 1850s was a decade of political realignment. The two traditional parties Whigs and Democrats were challenged by single-issue movements devoted to abolitionism, anti- Catholicism, anti-immigration and even temperance. Sectionalism further undermined the two major parties, as they divided into Southern and Northern factions. Robert Johanssen: The Democratic Party was becoming split, not quite there yet between northern Democrats and Southern Democrats over the slavery issue. The Whig Party was unable to cope with this division and after the Kansas-Nebraska Act it went down the drain. It was out. In its place arose the first third party movement that eventually took on the name Republican Party, a new sectional party.
Narrator: The Republican Party gathered anti-nebraska groups, free soilers and abolitionists into one party whose primary concern was the issue of slavery. Robert Johannsen: This is an important difference. The Whig Party was a national party with membership in both North and South. The Democratic Party is a national party. Now the Republican Party comes into view as a northern antislavery party, and this to Douglas is an ominous situation. If the Union is to be preserved, we can t afford to have these ideological parties. Narrator: As the Republican Party came to represent the North, the Democrats increasingly concentrated in the South. By the end of the decade, there was no major political party remaining that could transcend sectional differences. End of video. Video: Dred Scott This video analyzes the background, the Supreme Court's decision, and the immediate effects of the Dred Scott case. Look for answers to these questions when watching the video: Who was Dred Scott? On what grounds did he sue for his freedom? What was the majority decision in the Dred Scott case? Why did Chief Justice Taney and the majority make this ruling? What did the minority dissent claim? What did the Dred Scott decision mean to African Americans? How did it affect the issue of slavery in the territories? How did the decision affect the Republican and Democratic parties? Video script: Music introduction Narrator: In 1857, the Supreme Court was a decidedly partisan institution. Of the nine Supreme Court justices, seven were pro-slavery democrats. Five came from slaveholding
families. Their desire to secure the rights of slaveholders would cause them to make the most infamous judicial decision in American history. The man who started it all was named Dred Scott. Paul Finkelman: Dred Scott was a slave born in Virginia. His master ultimately moves him to St. Louis where he is sold a couple of times, and ultimately ends up in the hands of a man named John Emerson. John Emerson is an army surgeon and when John Emerson is posted to various frontier forts, the first one is in what is today Rock Island, Illinois. He takes Dred Scott with him, as his servant. Now presumably Dred Scott becomes free the moment he s taken to Rock Island because rock island is in Illinois - it s called Fort Armstrong at the time. But Dred Scott remains a slave at Ft. Armstrong and then his master takes him to Ft. Snelling, which is today St. Paul, Minnesota. Now that is area that was made free under the Missouri compromise. Narrator: Several years later, Dred Scott returned to St. Louis with his master. But after Emerson died, Scott sued for his freedom on the grounds that since he had lived in free territory he was no longer a slave. A jury of twelve white men in a St. Louis circuit court judged him legally free. Paul Finkelman: Two years later the Missouri Supreme Court reverses this. They reverse precedents going back to the beginning of Missouri s statehood and they are very frank about it. They say times have changed. Narrator: When John Emerson s widow remarried she transferred ownership of Dred Scott to her brother, John Sanford. Paul Finkelman: John Sanford lives in New York but has business interests in St. Louis, and so now Dred Scott can sue in federal court alleging he is a citizen of Missouri. His owner is a citizen of New York, and that s how the case goes forward to the Supreme Court. Narrator: No suit pressed by a slave had ever come before the Supreme Court before. It raised important questions. Paul Finkelman: The lawyers representing John Sanford made the argument that no black person can sue in federal court because black people can t be citizens of the United States.
Narrator: The majority opinion in Dred Scott was written by Chief Justice Roger Taney. Taney was a resolute foe of racial equality, the Republican Party, and the antislavery movement. Paul Finkelman: Chief Justice Taney begins by saying Dred Scott can t sue because blacks can t be citizens and he makes a very famous statement. He says at the time of the Constitution, they had no rights, they meaning blacks, had no rights that the white people needed to respect. Now having said that, Dred Scott can t sue, the technical legal thing Taney should have done was said case dismissed. Because obviously if Dred Scott can t sue, then he can t be in court. Taney can t hear the case any longer. Narrator: But Chief Justice Taney didn t stop there. Paul Finkelman: Taney goes on to face another constitutional question: the question of whether Congress could constitutionally have passed the Missouri Compromise. Did Congress have the power to prohibit slavery in the western territories? And here he makes an argument based on the 5th Amendment to the Constitution. The 5th Amendment says you cannot be deprived of your property without due process of law. And so he makes the argument that the federal territories cannot ban slavery because slavery is a fundamentally protected property within the United States constitutional scheme. Paul Finkelman: He says basically, Look, the Constitution is proslavery. We have a proslavery country. Slavery is a protected property. It s protected more than any other kind of property and it s protected in the territories. This was also, by the way, essentially a drop dead letter to the new Republican Party because the new Republican Party, organized in 1854 after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, was based on the theory that you should stop slavery from spreading into the territories. Actor, from The Independent, NY: We fearlessly declare that there never was, under the whole Heaven, a more atrocious, wholesale wickedness perpetrated upon the bench of justice than this. Actor, Frederick Douglass: Such a decision cannot stand. All that is merciful and just, on Earth and in Heaven, will execrate and despise this edict of Taney. Actor, from The Richmond Enquirer: The nation has achieved a triumph, sectionalism has been rebuked, and abolitionism has been staggered and stunned.
Narrator: Dred Scott himself was purchased by the sons of a former owner and set free a year later. But the controversy surrounding the Dred Scott decision did not quickly die down. Richard Blackett: It s that third element in the triangle of disasters I suppose, in the pre-civil war decade. In that, here now the court has joined the politicians in making a decision in this case in which the Supreme Court decides basically that Dred Scott and by extension all black Americans have no constitutional rights, that whites are bound to respect. End of video. Activity: Check Your Understanding In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas sponsored the Kansas-Nebraska Act and included a section repealing the Missouri Compromise because he needed southern support. Senator Douglas, a Democrat from Illinois, had presidential ambitions. By repealing the Missouri Compromise, Kansas and Nebraska territories would be open to the possibility of slavery. This attracted southern support and gave Douglas hope that he could straddle the divisive issue of expanding slavery into territories previously closed to slavery. The Democratic Party gained southern support as a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. The Whig Party, which had been losing ground for years, did not survive the political turmoil of the mid-1850s. Many northern Whigs now moved to the new Republican Party. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, a slave, was not a citizen of the United States. By that ruling, Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom, since the Supreme Court essentially defined slaves as property. In light of the case, slave owners could not be denied their property without due process of law, and could now take their slaves into any territory. This was obviously a pro-slavery decision in direct contrast to the position held by the Republican Party.