Introduction

This measure was passed as a way of defending slavery in Kansas while there existed uncertainty about the legality of slavery in the region. Moderate Democrats led by Stephen Douglas advocated for the policy of “Popular Sovereignty” in the 1850s. Popular Sovereignty left the question of whether a new territory would have slavery up to a popular vote. When new states were added, it threatened to overthrow a carefully constructed balance of slave and free states in the Senate. In 1820, the Missouri Compromise had ensured that slavery would not exist above the 36°30′ parallel (excluding Missouri itself), and admitted Maine as a free state to balance the slave state Missouri. In 1850 controversy emerged over the fate of newly acquired land in the aftermath of the Mexican-American War. Stephen Douglas and Henry Clay brokered a deal in which California was admitted as a free state while the Popular Sovereignty doctrine was allowed in New Mexico, Utah, and New Mexico. Additionally the South secured the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act, which mandated the return of captured escape slaves be immediately returned to their masters. Republicans also made constraining the expansion of slavery as one of the central planks of their platform. Republicans assumed that the natural state of a territory was for a state to be free. Pragmatically they also wanted to stop the Westward expansion of slavery to weaken the coalition of slave owning states, with the hope that slavery would starve itself out. 

In 1854 Douglas co-authored the Kansas-Nebraska Act with President Franklin Pierce. The law allowed for popular sovereignty in the Kansas territory, which was north of the 36°30′ parallel agreed upon in the Missouri Compromise. Many people came from outside the territory to attempt to decide the fate of the question of slavery in Kansas. Those who came in support of slavery were known as the “Border Ruffians” while those who came against slavery were known as the “Jayhawkers” (The University of Kansas’s mascot is the Jay Hawk in honor of them). Notable Jayhawkers included John Brown and several of his sons, who in 1856 reacted to the sacking of Lawrence by Border Ruffians, with the killing of five pro-slavery settlers in what became known as the Pottawatomie massacre. The violence collectively became known as “Bleeding Kansas”. John Brown would go on to attempt a raid on Harpers Ferry, with the idea of starting a slave rebellion to end slavery. In this the South saw one of the major realizations of their anti-abolitionist fears.

Those fears of a slave rebellion were manifest in this law. The Kansas Legislature realized that they might not be able to secure the votes to defend slavery, so they attempted to protect it through careful legislation. At the start of the bill one can see a fear over abolitionist’s aid of a potential slave rebellion. More critically one also sees the return to measures censoring the encouragement of a slave rebellion which one can also see in other measures from this chapter such as the sedition legislation proposed by Douglass in 1860, and the earlier laws passed during the Jackson administration regarding the mail.

While there were both slave and free capitals and constitutions of Kansas, the state was admitted as a free state. 

What insights can we gather about how the defenders of slavery attempted to guard slavery through legislation? What is the role of informal expressions of power, such as violence in the fight over slavery? Contrast how these struggles are similar or different from those in England from earlier chapters. 

Justin Hawkins