Citation
1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, May 30, 1854, FULL TEXT via National Archives
Excerpt
Political cartoon attacking the 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act (Library of Congress)
SECTION 32. And be it further enacted, … That the Constitution, and all laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable, shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Kansas as elsewhere within the United States, except the eighth section of the act preparatory to the admission of Missouri into the Union, approved March sixth, eighteen hundred and twenty, which, being inconsistent with the principle of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognized by the legislation of eighteen hundred and fifty, commonly called the Compromise Measures, is hereby declared inoperative and void; it being the true intent and meaning of this act not to legislate slavery into any Territory or State, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their domestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the Constitution of the United States…
Related Sources
- New York Times, “The Nebraska Bill in Indiana,” June 16, 1854
- Abraham Lincoln, Speech at Peoria, Illinois, October 16, 1854
- Abraham Lincoln to Elihu Benjamin Washburne, February 9, 1855
- David Davis to Julius Rockwell, March 4, 1855
- New York Herald, “The Kansas Question and the Anti-Slavery Disorganizers,” May 15, 1855
- Abraham Lincoln’s Speech at Springfield, Illinois, June 10, 1856