No Kansas-Nebraska Act

Kansas-Nebraska repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed popular sovereignty to decide slavery's fate in Kansas which as we know led to Bleeding Kansas. It all but killed the Democratic Party in the North in the midterm elections. Let's say for whatever reason, the act fails to pass or never proposed. Arguably, the backlash over Kansas-Nebraska killed whatever chance there was for the Ostend Manifesto coming into fruition, so maybe Pierce will try to make a grab at it? Will the Republicans still form without the Kansas-Nebraska Act backlash? Or maybe with a less charged slavery debate, could the Know-Nothings not decline?
 
Kansas-Nebraska repealed the Missouri Compromise and allowed popular sovereignty to decide slavery's fate in Kansas which as we know led to Bleeding Kansas. It all but killed the Democratic Party in the North in the midterm elections. Let's say for whatever reason, the act fails to pass or never proposed. Arguably, the backlash over Kansas-Nebraska killed whatever chance there was for the Ostend Manifesto coming into fruition, so maybe Pierce will try to make a grab at it? Will the Republicans still form without the Kansas-Nebraska Act backlash? Or maybe with a less charged slavery debate, could the Know-Nothings not decline?

Well, no Kansas-Nebraska Act would mean no caning of Charles Sumner at least (Sumner's speech was "The Crime Against Kansas"). However, issues like Dred Scott will probably come up and inflame the nation, even if it's a different unlucky slave involved, as Taney is still Chief Justice.

It may also prevent the temporary splitting of the Democratic party without such a disastrous decision hanging over Stephen Douglas's (a Northern Democrat) head.

I once wrote a paper on Bleeding Kansas years ago for an independent study credit in college, but I don't have it any more. :(

Overall, I think it will delay the violent aspects of the slavery debate (i.e. secession or the kind of terrorism in Bleeding Kansas) for a few years, but it will only forestall the issue, not resolve it.

This post is based on what I still remember about the subject. I hope it helps!
 
Secretary of State William Marcy, reflecting on the disastrous showing of the Democratic Party in the 1854 elections, wrote: "The Nebraska Question has sadly shattered our party in all the free states and deprived it of that strength which was needed and could have been much more profitably used for the acquisition of Cuba." (Quoted in David M. Potter, The Impending Crisis 1848-1861, p.198.) Some years ago I raised this question in soc.history.what-if: What in fact if the South had in 1854 concentrated on acquiring Cuba instead of making a futile attempt (and one which was recognized as futile by many Southerners at the time) to make Kansas a slave state? I do not think northern opposition to the acquisition of Cuba would have been as violent as to the Kansas-Nebraska Act. After all, slavery already existed in Cuba, so that the total area of slavery would not have been expanded. There would of course have been northern opposition, but I doubt that one could form a major party over it. (The Know Nothings might have taken the lead in opposing annexation by stressing the danger of a *Catholic* state, not a slave one--though some northern Know Nothings might use both arguments. In the South, the Know Nothings could argue that Cuba had too many free dark-colored people...)
 
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