Kansas-Nebraska Bill
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Kansas-Nebraska Bill. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
THE, BASKA BILL, and an act passed by Congress in 1854, durongress in 1854 bouleing the administration of President istration of Pre parks Franklin Pierce, for the purpose of orfor the purpose is ganizing the Territories of Kansas and tories of Kansa agri- Nebraska. It provided, among other provided, among south things, that the question of slavery question of g An should be left to the people; that questhe people; that live tions involving the title to slaves were to to slaves w City be left to local courts, with the right to with the rig in appeal to the United States Supreme d States Su the Court; and that the fugitive slave laws the fugitive slave United were to apply to the Territories. Furthe Territories. cather, so far as this region was concerned, region was conc It is the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which of 1820, excluded slavery from the Louisiana purchase N. of lat. 36° 30′ N., except from declared rethe State of Missouri, was pealed. This measure disrupted the Whig party, most of the S. Whigs joining the Democrats, and led to the organization of the Republican party in 1856. It was also instrumental in bringing about the Civil War. UNIVER- WESLEYAN KANSAS SITY, a co-educational institution in Salina, Kan.; founded in 1885 under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church; reported at the close of 1919: Professors and instructors, 17; students, 325; president, L. B. Bowers, Ph. D.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
an act passed by Congress in 1854. It was introduced by Senator Stephen A. Douglas, the chairman of the committee on territories. It passed the senate by a vote of 108 to 100. The bill was signed by President Pierce May 30th. The principal feature was a clause to the effect that, when any part of the territory included under the provision of the act should be admitted to the Union, it might come in free or slave as its inhabitants should decide. This bill was a repeal of the Missouri Compromise which had provided that no slave states should in the future be admitted north of the parallel of 36 deg. 30'. The passage of the bill created intense excitement and led to a systematic colonization of Kansas by anti-slave people from New England as well as slaveholders from Missouri. For an account of the border warfare that followed, see JOHN BROWN.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The basic account holds: Douglas's bill, signed by Pierce on 30 May 1854, repealed the Missouri Compromise line of 36°30' and left slavery to territorial voters, and it did help wreck the Whigs and make the Republican party. Two details have been tidied since. Aiton's 1910 figure of "108 to 100" belongs to the House, not the Senate, where the margin was comfortable; and the Republican party was organised in the North during 1854 itself, at meetings such as Ripon and Jackson, with 1856 marking only its first national convention, not its birth as Collier's had it in 1921. Modern historians also give more weight to Douglas's interest in a central transcontinental railroad route as a motive, and treat "Bleeding Kansas" less as a prelude to civil war than as an opening round of it — Kansas entering as a free state in January 1861, weeks before Fort Sumter.
Written for this edition, 2026.