Bloody Kansas Bloody Kansas, or Bleeding Kansas, is the term describing the violence which occurred during the settling of the Kansas territory. The phrase was first coined by antislavery publicists for the New York Tribune. During the Civil War, Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas, wishing to lure trans-continental railroad developers to build a rail system ending in Chicago in order to gain more profit for his own state, was halted in his efforts by Federal Law, which required him to first organize the vast scattered country into official territories before any progress could be made on the railroad. This caused him to hurriedly propose the Kansas-Nebraska Act to Congress in 1854. His proposal stated that two new territories …show more content…
Secretly, he believed that slavery would never become prominent in Kansas and Nebraska, simply because their terrain was ill-suited for the growth of cotton. He merely aimed to please the South with the use of popular sovereignty. The coy senator thus thought he could please both the slave-owners in the South and the abolitionists in the North, boost his own presidential campaign, and bring increased profit to Chicago and Illinois without having to change much. But his plan backfired. Though all Southerners jumped at the chance to open Northern territories to slavery, Northerners were outraged at the violation of the Missouri Compromise. Riots against the Kansas-Nebraska Act began to erupt in the Northern cities. The Act also caused the collapse of the Whig and Democratic Parties. The reason for this split were their voting differences: Southern Whigs voted with Southern Democrats against their Northern counterparts for the first time in history. The two groups of Whigs were never able to reunite after this drastic divide. The Democrats survived, though the Northern Democrats suffered a dramatic loss of seats in Congress that …show more content…
Most were west-ward migrating farmers in search of better land, but others rushed alter the balance of the decision of Kansas's free/slave status. When they learned that popular sovereignty would determine the state of Kansas, thousands of pro-slavery Missourians crossed into the territory and garnered as much land as they could, founding dozens of small towns. They were nicknamed "border ruffians" and often rigged elections, sometimes recruiting comrades to illegally cross over to Kansas and cast ballots. Some voted more than once and even threatened locals to vote pro-slavery. Northern abolitionists, fearing that Kansas would become the next pro-slavery state, also rushed to Kansas to found their own "Free Soil" towns. The two even established their own territorial capitals. Inevitably, the two factions clashed. In one altercation, a band of impetuous pro-slavery settlers burned the Free-Soil town of Lawrence, Kansas, to the ground. In an act of revenge, the deranged John Brown and his own band of border ruffians killed five pro-slavery settlers in what is known as the Pottawatomie Massacre. Brown, nor any of his followers, were ever tried for their crimes. Within Months, Kansas was fraught with violent crimes, lawlessness and marauding bands slaughtering each other. This bloodshed and uncontrolled lawlessness earned the territory the nickname "Bleeding
To put it simply (as I recall and it's been years since I've had to read about this subject)a new territory was opened to settle in. It was decided that the settlers of these states would decide whether or not slavery would be permitted. This gave birth to the new Republican Party which opposed slavery. The Act was designed by Stephen A Douglas a Democratic senator from Illinois (the same who would later defeat a young Abraham Lincoln for the senate in 1858) and repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Thousands of settlers both pro and anti slavery rushed into Kansas particularly and bloody, murderous fights broke out among the groups hence the nickname "Bleeding Kansas". It was actually one territory but this Act divided it into two states.
The Democratic Party was sectionally shattered by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but it also gave birth to the Republicans. Ultimately, the Kansas-Nebraska Act would lead to a sectional rift in the country that would prove too deep to patch up without war. During the year of 1855, Governor Andrew Reeder called for an election for a legislature for the state o Kansas. He carefully planned out the election to make it fair by appointed two Free Soilers and one proslavery judges and several supervisors.
Lincoln received more popular votes than the Democrats; this was an important shift in Illinois. Lincoln gained a strong reputation through out the entire north. By Douglas winning, he further alimented Presidents Buchanan’s administration and especially the south. The south soon lost its power in the Senate; the division of the Democratic Party was even more splintered. Lincoln assured the south that he would not interfere with slavery in their states where it already excited. Also, Lincoln assured the north that he was not ready for political or social equality of the races.
It also gave the South another slave state in Missouri and the north a free state in Maine. Although each region gained a state in the Senate, the south benefited most from the acquisition because Missouri was in such a pivotal position in the country, right on the border. Later on with the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, Missouri had a big role in getting Kansas to vote south because many proslavery Missourians crossed the border into Kansas to vote slavery. The Missouri Compromise also helped slavery because the line that was formed to limit slavery had more land below the line than above it. Therefore, slavery was given more land to be slave and therefore more power in the Senate, when the territories became state.
In the years paving the way to the Civil War, both north and south were disagreeable with one another, creating the three “triggering” reasons for the war: the fanaticism on the slavery issue, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and the separation of the Democratic Party. North being against the bondage of individuals and the South being for it, there was no real way to evade the clash. For the south slavery was a form of obtaining a living, without subjugation the economy might drop majorly if not disappear. In the North there were significant ethical issues with the issue of subjugation. Amazing measures to keep and dispose of subjugation were taken and there was never a genuine adjusted center for bargain. Despite the fact that there were a lot of seemingly insignificant issues, the fundamental thing that divided these two states was bondage and the flexibilities for it or against. With these significant extremes, for example, John Brown and Uncle Tom's Cabin, the south felt disdain towards the danger the Northerners were holding against their alleged flexibilities. The more hatred the South advanced, the more combative they were to anything the Northerners did. Northerners were irritated and it parted Democrats over the issue of bondage and made another Republican gathering, which included: Whigs, Free Soilers, Know Nothings and previous Democrats and brought about a split of segments and abbreviated the street to common war. Southerners loathed the insubordination of the north and started to address how they could stay with the Union.
Additionally, the majority of states had conflicts between slavery in their territory, one of them dealt with missouri. Missouri applied for admission into the Union as a slave state; this became a problem because missouri ruined the balance for free slaves and slave states. The northern states wanted to ban slavery from occurring in missouri because the unbalanced situation it put towards the other states. In response, the southern states declared how congress doesn’t have the power to ban slavery in missouri. However, Henry Clay offers a solution, the missouri compromise of 1820. Missouri admitted as slave state and Maine becomes a free slave state. Slavery is banned in Louisiana creating a 36 30 line in missouri’s southern border; this maintained the balance in the U.S senate.
When Meriwether Lewis and William Clark first explored Montana in the early 1800s, they were awestruck by the open plains and delighted by the wide range of animals that roamed the land. After reaching the Great Falls, which is on the Missouri River in what is now Montana (Av2 books).
...ry as inhumane and against universal suffrage. Both abolitionists agreed that compromise was not probable and slave labor was morally wrong. Thus, its expansion must be halted. Similarly the Southern Democrats, although their ideology was the opposite, were not willing to compromise on the issue of the expansion of slavery. Southern Democrat, James Henry Hammond, believed that slavery was necessary for the economic growth of the nation and without it, the North would also perish. Furthermore, the Constitutional Convention of South Carolina agreed secession was unavoidable when Abraham Lincoln was appointed into office. Therefore, initiated the beginning of an inevitable confrontation between the North and the South. These two exceptionally strict and uncompromising ideologies regarding slavery led to one of the most controversial and bloody wars in American history.
But the feeling of relief that spread throughout the country proved to be the calm before the storm. On December 14, 1853, Augustus C. Dodge of Iowa introduced a bill in the Senate. The bill proposed organizing the Nebraska territory, which also included an area that would become the state of Kansas. His bill was referred to the Committee of the Territories, which was chaired by Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. Douglas had entered politics early and had advanced quickly; at 21 he was Illinois state's attorney, and by age 35 he was a U.S. Senator.
Previously Whigs would have benefited from this however; as Farmer argues, “the Whig collapse has often been seen as a direct result of the Kansas Nebraska Act”. This emphasises that all the factors are linked as the actions of politicians with the Kansas Nebraska Act and the decisions over slavery caused the Whig party failure. This all built up created the tensions that resulted in the Civil War. Another reason for Whig's failure was their inability to deal with the two major issues of immigration and Catholicism.
...h and the South wanted the territory for themselves. The North wanted to expand its industrial fingers to better their economy, but the South wanted more land for plantations to also better their economy. First, the Wilmot Proviso established popular sovereignty as the new factor that decided what side was going to obtain the land. This angered the South because they were frightened that their voice would be lost, and subsequently slavery would be demolished. However, the North felt anger after Stephen Douglass proposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed any white male settler to decide if the new territory would be slave or free. With Southern white men trying to make the territories slave territories, the North were furious and started bleeding Kansas, which arguably was the spark that ignited the Civil War.
...le from the northern half of the country believed the exact opposite. The northern half of the country did agree with what the Missouri Compromise changed, and they thought that the Congress does have the right to choose which states had slavery and which states didn’t have slavery. The thought of Congress having the power to change various laws on slavery did not bother the north near as much as the south.
The north strongly disagreed with the expansion of slavery, while south agreed to expand slavery throughout new territories and regions. The north's decision was based on factors such as political and economical threat instead of a moral threat, as it was depicted in the Missouri Compromise. However, the Compromise of 1850 showed a more argument towards the morality threat, making it more united than ever. The Missouri Compromise had an interesting political action, it depicted the norths disagreement towards slavery was more of a political issue rather than a moral argument. In the early 19th century, the north was populated with abolitionists and radicals, those who believed in abolition.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act was one of the first events that demonstrated Lincoln’s disapproval yet tolerance for slavery. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, proposed by Stephen A. Douglas and signed by Franklin Pierce, divided the region into two territories. The territory north of the 40th parallel was the Kansas Territory and the south of the 40th parallel was the Nebraska Territory, the controv...
Hesiod’s Theogony and the Babylonian Enuma Elish are both myths that begin as creation myths, explaining how the universe and, later on, humans came to be. These types of myths exist in every culture and, while the account of creation in Hesiod’s Theogony and the Enuma Elish share many similarities, the two myths differ in many ways as well. Both myths begin creation from where the universe is a formless state, from which the primordial gods emerge. The idea of the earth and sky beginning as one and then being separated is also expressed in both myths.