Term Paper on Stephan A. Douglas - the Kansas Nebraska Act
Stephen Douglas was a U.S. Senator, a leading advocate of "popular sovereignty,"
the planner of the polemical and consequential Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and
the presidential candidate of the Northern wing of the Democratic party in 1860.
Mexican War that reinstated the issue of slavery into the national political
debate; precisely, whether slavery would be admitted to expand into the western
territories. Douglas took a central ground between the northern antislavery
notion that the federal government could prohibit slavery in the territories and
the southern pro-slavery pose that the Constitution defended the institution
there. Instead, he advocated, what he held was a more democratic, impartial, and
practical solution, that is to let the voters of the territories choose the
issue themselves, the doctrine of the "popular sovereignty." The Illinois
senator was favorable in the movement of the Compromise of 1850, which admitted
the Utah and New Mexico territories to be arranged on the grounds of popular
sovereignty, while letting California to enter as a free state, which its
residents preferred. He privately held that slavery was ill suited for
transmitting to the west and that the settlers would discard it.
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So as to expedite the settlement of the west, Douglas drafted and introduced a
bill to found two territorial governments in part of the Louisiana Purchase
land. By permitting the citizens of the territories to vote on the slavery
issue, Douglas's Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 revoked the Missouri Compromise
prohibition on slavery in that area. The bill ablaze a political firestorm that
caused the downfall of the Whig party, the birth of the Republican party, and
the distention of a crevice between the northern and southern wings of the
Democratic party. From this time on, in the 1850s sectional politics because
more volatile and violent Pro- and antislavery forces in Kansas created rival
territorial governments and affianced in bloody guerrilla war.
In 1857 the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Dred Scott case that slavery was
constitutionally protected from interference by federal or territorial
government. That ruling undermined Douglas's support of popular sovereignty, but
he responded with his "Freeport Doctrine" and argued that territorial citizens
could ensnare the letter of the decision by repelling to pass legislation that
supported and protected the institution. He reasoned that slave owners would not
risk to a territory where their investment in slaves was vulnerable.
In 1858 Douglas held a series of seven debates with his Republican senatorial
challenger, Abraham Lincoln. The only topic was the issue of slavery. His final
words were a message for his sons: "Tell them to obey the laws and support the
Constitution of the United States." Douglas anticipated that his loyalty to
Buchanan would make stronger the party and keep his influence in the new
administration. However the topic of self-government in the territories soon
made that impossible. A pro-slavery conference meeting in Lecompton, Kansas drew
up a constitution suggesting statehood with the provision that all possessions
in slaves be preserved. Elections for the Lecompton delegates had been
perforated with fraud, and the meeting gave no means for a promoted referendum
on the constitution as a total. Voters were given only the single option of
assenting the constitution "with slavery" or "without slavery."
Lecompton for Douglas, was an important inquest of popular sovereignty. As the
Lecompton constitution was not a complete and sovereign expression of the will
of the people of Kansas, according to Douglas, it could not be acclaimed, no
matter what stance was taken on slavery. Buchanan and Douglas fought timidly for
nearly a year before encountering each other at the White House in December
1857.
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Douglas's tactics in the debates was to represent Lincoln as a radical "Black
Republican" whose aim was to incite civil war, free the slaves, and make blacks
the social and political equals of whites. Lincoln rejected that he was a
radical. Rather he supported the Fugitive Slave Law and counters any resistance
with slavery in the states where it previously existed.
Douglas argued that slavery was a failing institution that had reached its
intrinsic limits and could not prosper where climate and soil were unfriendly.
He contended that the issue of slavery could best be solved if it were treated
as fundamentally a territorial problem. On the other hand Lincoln regarded
slavery as a powerful, expansionistic institution, famished for new territory.
He argued that if Northerners acclaimed slavery to expanse unhindered, slave
owners would make slavery a national institution and would lessen all laborers,
white as well as black, to a state of implicit slavery.
Douglas was inept to imagine of blacks as anything but lower to whites, and he
was unalterably opposed to Negro citizenship. "I want citizenship for whites
only," he avowed. Lincoln said that he, too, was averse to "bringing about in
any way the social and political equality of the white and black races." However
he asserted that black Americans were equal to Douglas and "every living man" in
their right to life, freedom, and the fruits of their own labor. Douglas was of
the opinion that the residents of a territory could exclude slavery by refusing
to pass laws protecting slaveholders' property rights. "Slavery cannot exist a
day or an hour anywhere," he declared, "unless it is supported by local police
regulations."
Douglas critics charge that the Illinois Senator's chief interest was to win the
Democratic presidential nomination in 1960 and secure a right of way for a
transcontinental railroad that would make Chicago the country's transportation
hub. Where as his supporters pictured him as a guardian of western development
and a genuine believer in popular sovereignty as an answer to the problem of
slavery in the western territories. Douglas insisted that the democratic answer
to the slavery was to let the people who in fact settled a territory to resolve
whether slavery would be permitted or banned. He believed that the popular
sovereignty would let the nation to "avoid the slavery agitation for all time to
come." The pro-slavery and antislavery groups fought many wars, each side
wanting to gain control of Kansas so they could vote for it to become a slave
state or a free state. These wars are known as "Bloody Kansas."
Following the Compromise of 1850, the amply Democratic southern congressional
leaders did not enjoy being the minority party. California's admissions to the
Union had created an imbalance between free and slave states. The Great American
Desert, as defined by the 36o; 30' provision of the Compromise of 1820, was now
the place of many Indian Reservations and a larger target of European
immigrants. The region was also confirmed to be more appropriate for farming
than formerly thought. Certain Democrats were interested in occupying the region
with pro-slavery citizens while trying to have the Compromise of 1820 avowed
unconstitutional. They had found out that the territory was going to be a part
of the intended transcontinental railway and that the slaves could be shipped
west from here at some point in the future. But the thing that stood in their
way: the 36 o; 30' proviso.
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Douglas had bought a lot of stock in the railroad and accordingly had a vested
interest in seeing the railroad get built and be put to use for transportation
of people and cargo to the western territories. His link to the railroad was
communal knowledge and so were his political intents. Douglas in due time came
upon a plan, which he felt would be a win-win conclusion for the south and his
own agenda. Historian Robert Goldston best-described Douglas' blind aim when he
wrote: "Douglas was a man who refused, on principle, to stand on principle."
His proposal was to split Nebraska Territory into two parts: Kansas, the new
region, would try to become a slave state while Nebraska would probable attract
free-soilers. Douglas managed to create a public uprightness or sense of
morality where none had been. Anti-slavery Whigs, Free-Soil Party members and
northern Democrats all allied in reply by creating the Republican Party.
According to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, slavery was to be "forever
prohibited" from that part of the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30' line,
and southern democrats proscribed to let the bill to pass if that prohibition
stood. Despite some Southerners demanded a clear revocation of the 1820 line,
Douglas's measure did so indirectly by saying that it was now "inoperative and
void" as it had been "superseded" by the popular sovereignty provisions of the
Compromise of 1850 that applied to Kansas and Nebraska along with New Mexico and
Utah. Such was the intention of Douglas, for which the historians recommend that
the part he played in the American politics is rather of a self-centered person,
and a pro-slavery.
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