Kansas-Nebraska Act

Questions for Further Study

• 1. Was Douglas justified in believing that the principle of popular sovereignty would diffuse the sectional crisis in the United States?
• 2. In 1850 many Americans believed that the compromise measures crafted by Congress had produced a final resolution of the slavery controversy in the United States. Only eleven years later the nation found itself enmeshed in a bloody civil war. What role, if any, did the Kansas-Nebraska Act play in precipitating that war?
• 3. In a speech about the Kansas-Nebraska Act delivered in the fall of 1850, Abraham Lincoln argued,

  Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove FROM; not to remove TO. New free States are the places for poor people to go to and better their condition. For this use, the nation needs these territories.

  How might Douglas have responded to this critique of his bill?