Causes of the Civil War:
Part 2
Kansas-Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Southern Congressmen rejected a
transcontinental railroad starting in
Chicago
WHY?
No way!! We want it
to start in New
Orleans!
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Senator Stephen
Douglas wanted to
open up Kansas &
Nebraska to
slavery in
exchange for
southern support
for a Chicago
railroad.
Kansas-Nebraska Act
1854: Law divided the remainder of the Louisiana
Purchase into two territories in which slavery
would be determined by popular sovereignty
Kansas-Nebraska Act
• Reactions:
– “Gross
violation of
a sacred
pledge”:
removed
Missouri
Compromise
line
– Northern
abolitionists
outraged
“Bleeding Kansas”
“Bleeding Kansas”
• Rush by pro/anti-slavery groups to get
people to Kansas to vote
• Pro-slavery majority set up government
• Anti-slavery group set up their own
government
• Both sides armed; violence breaks out50+ killed
“Bleeding Kansas”
• Sack of Lawrence
– May 1856: pro-slavery group tried to
arrest anti-slavery leaders; destroyed
town
“Bleeding Kansas”
• Pottawatomie
Massacre
– John Brown’s antislavery group killed 5
pro-slavery men in
revenge
Violence in Congress
• Senator
Charles
Sumner gave
speech called
“The Crime
Against
Kansas”
“Against this Territory…a crime
has been committed…It is the
rape of a virgin territory,
compelling it to the hateful
embrace of Slavery; and it may
be clearly traced to a depraved
longing for a new slave state,
the hideous offspring of such a
crime, in hope of adding to the
power of slavery in the
National Government.”
—Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against
Kansas”
Violence in Congress
–Insulted
Senator
Andrew
Butler in
speech
Sumner
Butler
“The Senator from South Carolina…has chosen a mistress to whom he
has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to
him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean
the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words. Let
her be impeached in character, or any proposition made to shut her out
from the extension of her wantonness, and no extravagance of manner or
hardihood of assertion is then too great for this Senator.”
—Charles Sumner, “The Crime Against Kansas”
Violence in Congress
• Congressman
Preston Brooks,
nephew of
Butler, took
revenge on
Sumner (May
1856)