How did the north react to the Kansas-Nebraska Act?

Answer 1

The Northern states were not happy about the Kansas-Nebraska act because they felt it would spread slavery. The Northerners considered the Missouri compromise, which outlawed slaver, to be a longstanding, binding agreement.

Answer 2

At this point in 1854, Senator Stephan A. Douglas of Illinois delivered a counterstroke to offset the Gadsden thrust for southern expansion westward, his Kansas-Nebraska scheme. An ardent booster for the West, he longed to break the North-South deadlock over westward expansion and stretch a line of settlements across the continent.He had also invested heavily in Chicago real estate and in railway stock and was eager to have the Windy City become the eastern terminus of the proposed Pacific railroad. He would thus endear himself to the voters of Illinois, benefit his section, and enrich his own purse.

A veritable "steam engine in breeches," Douglas threw himself behind a legislative scheme that would enlist the support of a reluctant South. The proposed territory of Nebraska would be split into two territories, Kansas and Nebraska. Their status regarding slavery would be settled by popular sovereignty - a democratic concept to which Douglas and his western constitutes were deeply attached. Kansas, which lay due west of slaveholding Missouri, would presumably choose to become a slave state. But Nebraska, lying west of free-soil Iowa, would presumably become a free state.

Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska scheme flatly contradicted the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had forbbiden slavery in the proposed Nebraska Territory north of the sacred 36 30' line. The only way to open the region to popular sovereignty was repeal the ancient compact outright. This bold step Douglas was now prepared to take, even at the risk of shattering the uneasy truce patched together byt the Compromise of 1850.

Many southerners, who had not concieved of Kansas as slave soil, rose to the bait.Here was the chance to gain one more slave state. The pliable President Pierce, under the thumb of southern advisers, threw his full weight behind the Kansas-Nebraska Bill.

But the Missouri Compromise, then thirty-four years old, could not be brushed aside lightly. Whatever Congress passed it can repeal, but by this time the North had come to regard the sectional pact as almostas sacred as the Constitution itself.Free-soil members of Congress struck back with a vengeance. They met their match in the violence gesticulating Douglas, who was the ablest rough-and-tumble debater of his generation. Employing twisted logic and oratorical fireworks, he rammed the bill through Congress, with strong support from many southerners.

Douglas's motives in prodding anew snarling dog of slavery have long puzzled historians. His foes have accused him of angling for the presidnecy in 1856. Yet his admirers haave argued plausibly in his defense that if he had not championed the ill-omened bill, someone else would have.

The truth seems to be that Douglas acted somewhat impulsively and recklessly. His heart did not bleed over the issue of slavery, and he declared repeatedly that he did not care whether it was voted up or down in the territories. What he failed to perceive was that hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens in the North did feel deeply on this moral issue. They regarded the repeal of the Missouri Compromise as an intollerable breach of faith, and they would henceforth resist to the last trench all future southern demands for slave territory. As Abraham Lincoln said, the North wanted to give to pioneers in the West "a clean bed, with no snakes in it."

Genune leaders, like skillful chess players, must forsee the possible effects of their moves. Douglas predicted a "hell of a storm" but he grossly underestemated its proportions. His critics in the North, branding him a "Judas" and a "traito," greeted his name with frenzied boos, hisses, and "three groans for Doug." But he still enjoyed a high degree of popularity among his following in the Democratic party, especially in Illinois, a stronghold of popular sovereignty.

Answer 3

The Northern states were not happy about the Kansas-Nebraska act because they felt it would spread slavery. The Northerners considered the Missouri compromise, which outlawed slaver, to be a longstanding, binding agreement.

Answer 4

To send terrorists across the border into Kansas to intimidate the public into voting for slavery, and to cast illegal votes themselves.

Answer 5

It violated the Missouri Compromise