Kansas-Nebraska Act

( 1854 ) Commentary by Martin J. Hershock, University of Michigan—Dearborn

“Said Territory or any portion of the same, shall be received into the Union with or without slavery, as their constitution may prescribe at the time of admission.” - Sections 1 and 19
“That the Constitution, and all Laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Nebraska as elsewhere within the United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slaves in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States.” - Section 14

This 1856 cartoon depicts the violence that followed the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act (Library of Congress)

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