When you think of famously fraught relationships, you might think of Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester. Or Heathcliff and Catherine. Or Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. But these stormy relationships got nothing on the North and the South, circa 1853. "It's Complicated" doesn't even begin to sum up their dynamic. Sure, they were both part of the United States—that part was all fine and dandy—but for the past several years, things had been kind of strained between them. All the idiosyncrasies they'd each found so cute about the other when the relationship was new were now starting to get annoying. Differences of opinion turned into major arguments. They were constantly fighting about money, friends, and who should do the chores around the house. One thing was for sure: the honeymoon was over. They did eventually break up in 1861, though they got back together in 1865 after their quarrel resulted in a big ol' Civil War, and they've been pretty solid ever since. But we want to focus on the bad old days before the war. Like we said, the North and South disagreed about a lot of stuff. Many predicted they'd break up long before they did. And while no one single event can be blamed for what happened in 1861, one of the final straws for that relationship was definitely the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. This piece of legislation did two things: it (a) formed and organized the Nebraska Territory and Kansas Territory, and (b) left it up to the people in each Territory to decide whether they wanted to allow slavery or not. The North was upset because it was all, "I thought we already dealt with the slavery issue in 1820 with that whole Missouri Compromise thing." And the South basically said, "Compromise shlompromise. If you want that spiffy new transcontinental railroad you've been flirting with to end up in the North instead of down here, you'll quit telling our new friends that they can't have slaves." And then relationship-counselor-slash-U.S.-Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois stepped in and urged them to try a technique called "popular sovereignty." If they'd just let the people of Kansas and Nebraska vote and decide for themselves if they wanted slavery, Douglas reasoned, then the North and South could just put the whole slave issue aside and focus instead on the love of democracy that brought them together in the first place. They reluctantly agreed, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act became a thing in May of 1854. Failed Couples CounselingPresident Pierce, who signed it into law, thought it would help the North and South heal their relationship wounds, or at least keep them from going at each other's throats all the time. It didn't. Not only could the North and South not put the slavery issue aside after all, but their disagreements about it (and other things) started getting more and more violent. Kansas found itself in the national spotlight as the slavery controversy played out with more drama than even the Kardashians can supply, all over the new Territory. It got so bad that, in 1861, South Carolina and a few of its southern colleagues decided it just wasn't worth the fight to stay together. They straight seceded from the U.S., gave the North a nice Skroob salute, and changed their name to the Confederate States of America. The North got angry and told the South they weren't allowed to just up and leave like that, and thus the Civil War began. Towns were destroyed, families were ripped apart, and roughly 2% of the country's population died before it was all over. Yeah. It wasn't exactly an amicable break-up.
We're going to keep this one simple: you should care about this dauntingly Midwestern-sounding act because slavery isn't a thing anymore. Yup, that pretty much sums it up: thanks in large (though indirect and somewhat unintentional) part to the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, our country doesn't do that whole horribly evil and morally indefensible thing of selling humans anymore. Before this Act, there was a tenuous balance between free and slave states in the U.S. Thanks to the Missouri Compromise, slavery was forbidden north of the 36th Parallel (except for Missouri) and had been since 1820. For a time, this strategy pacified both the pro-slavery South and the abolitionist North. But you know how they say you can please all of the people some of the time or some of the people all of the time? Yeah. Both the North and South didn't stay pacified for long. Ye olde Kansas-Nebraska invoked what's known as "popular sovereignty" and allowed new territories and states to decide for themselves whether they wanted slavery, regardless of which parallels they were north or south of. Nebraska did what everyone thought it would do and voted to prohibit slavery. (Get it, Cornhuskers.) Kansas, which everyone thought would vote to allow slavery and maintain that national free/slave balance, caused heart rates everywhere to rise when it became the main stage for violent conflicts between the pro-slavery movement and the Free State movement. Its early elections were such a circus, they make Florida's 2000 election cycle chad fiasco look downright dignified. The tensions heightened by Kansas-Nebraska boiled over into a skirmish known as the Civil War. Maybe you've heard of it/read about/have a weird uncle who's obsessed with it? The war was a horrible and bloody affair, but when it was over, the 13th Amendment happened, which made slavery 100% illegal in the United States. And sure—we know that there were a whole lot of other docs (looking at you, Emancipation Proclamation) that worked towards ending slavery in a real way. But the important thing about the Kansas-Nebraska Act is that it tipped the U.S. of A. into civil war. Before this act rolled onto the scene, people weren't fired up enough to enact something that earth-shaking. But after the Kansas-Nebraska Act? Well, this little doc lit a fuse…and the resulting explosion set the stage for American slavery to join witch-burning, smallpox epidemics, and foot binding as an insanely ugly historical chapter that now only lives on in the pages of textbooks.
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A piece of legislation that called for popular sovereignty to decide the slavery issue was
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