How did the Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act reshape the debates over slavery?

0:03We get a first great compromise in 1820 over Missouri. We get a second great compromise 30 years later in 1850 that we call the compromise of 1850. If the Louisiana purchase is the reason why we get the Missouri compromise, the Mexican War is the reason why we get the compromise of 1850. We go to war with Mexico over what a lot of people believe were trumped up excuses. Abraham Lincoln is one of them who believes that these are trumped up excuses. He is serving his solitary term as a United States Representative during the closing months of the Mexican War. And he's very forthright on the floor of Congress and saying this whole conflict was created out of the imagination of President James Polk to promote his interests politically and the interests of his party politically. A lot of opposition to the Mexican War. I think rightly so. The outcome of the war is successful for the United States,

1:09and as a result of that settlement, the remaining third of what is now the American West, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, California, all of that, which had been part of the Mexican Republic is now annexed to the United States. The question then immediately pops up again. Well, what about that 36 degrees 30 line that was established back in 1820? Southerners say, wait a minute. We've just acquired an enormous amount of territory below that line.

1:43We're not particularly happy with that restriction. We think this should be revisited. There were Northerners who said, well, we drew that 36 degree 30 line on the assumption that we weren't really leaving very much territory to be organized as slave territory. Now suddenly, we've acquired all of this new land from Mexico, and now people are going to jump to it and say, well, we're going to organize that for legalized slavery.

2:11Northerners said, we don't think that was originally the intent of the Missouri Compromise. We would like to see some kind of restriction on that. So the conflict breaks out a new in Congress. It's resolved by another great compromise. One which is originally designed by Henry Clay, but which is implemented by a junior senator from Illinois named Stephen A. Douglas. The compromise of 1850 basically says, we will set aside aspects of the 1820 compromise and allow people in the newly acquired Mexican territories to make decisions for themselves on the basis of what Douglas called popular sovereignty. Let the people there decide whether they want to legalize slavery or not. But we'll keep the 36 degree 30 line so that anything of the old Louisiana purchase has to be organized as free territory. This compromise of 1850 seems to make everyone happy for a while, only for a while. By the time four years have passed,

3:18Southerners are beginning to agitate against the restraint of that 36 degrees 30 line and Stephen A. Douglas is sympathetic too. Stephen A. Douglas would like to see the West opened up, developed, he'd like to see federal territories organized, he'd like to see those territories admitted to states. We would like to link the east of the United States with the Pacific Coast. We'd like to do that by railroads, by trade. You're not going to be able to do that unless you get those territories in the Louisiana purchase organized. Southern slave holders are not going to agree to organize them so long as there's a restriction that prevents them from taking slaves there. In January of 1854, Stephen A. Douglas proposes new legislation to repeal the old 1820 compromise and allow the popular sovereignty rule to prevail in the Louisiana purchase territories now. He will argue and say,

4:20isn't this the democratic way to do things? Small D. Let the people in the territories themselves decide. We thought that was good for the rule in 1850. Why shouldn't it be the rule of 1854? So he pushes. He wrestles. He wrangles, he threatens. He stamps and he finally gets out of Congress the Kansas Nebraska Bill.

4:44Kansas Nebraska Bill repeals the Missouri Compromise of 1820. Now all the Louisiana purchased territories can be organized, depending on whether they're settlers want them as free or slave territories, this makes Southerners very happy. This enrages Northerners who believe that it was a renegging on the bargain, the agreement of 1820 in favor of freedom. Lincoln himself, who had, since his term in the House of Representatives gone back to Illinois and basically immersed himself in the practice of law. Lincoln said this brought me an awakening. It was like hearing an earthquake and we rose, stunned, but each of us reaching for an instrument, reaching for a sigh, a hammer, a rake, anything to oppose Douglas on the Kansas Nebraska Bill. That is what brings Abraham Lincoln back into political life.

5:46It is what sets off anew, the controversy between pro-slavery and anti-slavery between North and South. Here we get even closer, following that line that will lead us only seven years later to the American Civil War.