Missouri Compromise & Kansas Nebraska Act

The Missouri Compromise of 1820 was intended to maintain the balance of power between free and slave states. It allowed for Missouri to finally enter the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Excluding Missouri, the law banned slavery north of the 36⁰ 30’ latitude line in lands part of the Louisiana Purchase, such as the Kansas-Nebraska territory. By 1854, the Missouri Compromise was effectively repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which used the principle of popular sovereignty, to declare that the residents of a potential state would decide if said state would legalize slavery. Since the Act split the Kansas-Nebraska territory into two, many assumed that Nebraska would enter the Union as a free state, being firmly in the North, and that Kansas would enter as a slave state, being adjacent to Missouri, a slave state. However, abolitionist weren’t willing to let Kansas go without a fight, which spurred the creation of the Republican Party as well as Bleeding Kansas. Ultimately, by 1857, the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision rendered the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional by declaring that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories. It also denied citizenship for Black Americans.