Question/Problem 3: How did ideas and events contribute to the conflict between North and South?

The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 divided the Nebraska Territory into Kansas and Nebraska and provided for popular sovereignty in the newly formed territories. Pro- and anti-slavery forces poured into Kansas trying to sway the vote. Read the following de scription of the events of 1856 and answer the questions below.

...In Washington, in the chamber of the U.S. Senate, a South Carolina congressman had attacked and severely beaten Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a Republican who'd recently given an anti-Southern speech on "The Crime Against Kansas." At almost the same time, another Missouri mob had sacked Lawrence, Kansas, destroying free-state printing presses, blowing up the free-state hotel, and robbing and burning homes there. In retaliation, John Brown and his little free-state company had massacred five proslavery men down on Pottawatomie Creek, dragging them out of their cabins in the dead of night and assassinating them with broadswords. A reign of terror had broken out in eastern Kansas, as Missouri militia and their Kansas allies burned and pillaged free-state communities from Lawrence to Osawatomie. As Lincoln had predicted would happen under popular sovereignty, civil war now raged on the Kansas prairie-- proof indeed that slavery was too volatile ever to be solved as a purely local matter.

From Stephen B. Oates, With Malice Toward None: The Life of Abraham Lincoln (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), p. 136.

1. Gather information on Charles Sumner in an encyclopedia or biographical dictionary. Who was he? Who beat him? What happened to his assailants? What happened to Sumner?

2. What did Sumner mean by "The Crime Against Kansas?"

3. Who was John Brown? What other part would he play in the road to war?

4. How was the Kansas situation settled? (See your text or another resource.)

5. Explain the ways this act contributed to the conflict between the North and the South?