Repealing an 1820 law banning slavery in territories north of Missouri's southern border, the Kansas-Nebraska Act left both territories (as mapped out in 1855) up for grabs. Library of Congress ...

The Kansas-Nebraska Act effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise, leading to a race to settle Kansas that resulted in pitched battles and a prelude to the Civil War. Although Pierce sought a ...

Challenges: Franklin Pierce had to deal with the violent consequences—“Bleeding Kansas”—of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, which some historians categorize as a low-intensity civil war. Pierce ...

The Missouri Compromise, which restricted the expansion of slavery, was swept aside by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. With a nod to Southern power, the federal government decided to place the ...