Gold Rush 1853

We've all heard of the California Gold Rush in 1849, but only a decade later there was another in what later became Colorado.

Is there any way it could be made to happen a few years sooner - say in '52 or 53? There may be other ways of getting there, but the direct one is across what was soon to become Kansas and Nebraska. So you've got a flood of people crossing Kansas, most of whom have little interest in slavery. In that situation, would the proslavery people stand an earthly, or would a free state be a foregone conclusion, as in California? If so, how does the politics of the rest of the 1850s get changed?
 
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