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702 prelude to war Kansas-Nebraska Act 1856 Fifth Lincoln-Douglas Debate October 7, 1858 The line drawn by the Missouri Compromise, forbidding slavery north of Missouri’s southern border in territory from the Louisiana Purchase, brought on bloody conflict between pro- and antislavery forces; this effectively stopped the admission of new states from the area. Finally, in 1854, Illinois senator Stephen A. Douglas proposed legislation to split the Nebraska territory in two. Passed as two identical acts, one each for Nebraska and the new territory of Kansas, this legislation provided that, counter to the provisions of the Missouri Compromise, Congress would have no say in whether slavery was allowed in either territory. Instead , inhabitants of both Nebraska and Kansas would decide for themselves whether to allow slavery. The Missouri Compromise was declared inoperative and void. Douglas was the incumbent senator from Illinois when Lincoln decided to run for that office and when Lincoln challenged Douglas to a series of debates. The ensuing debates focused on issues arising from what became known as the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Lincoln’s performance did not win him a Senate seat. It did, however, launch him to national prominence as the man who had shown himself able to hold his own in public debate with Douglas. Douglas was reelected by the state legislature, but in 1860, in a highly splintered election, lost his bid for the presidency to Lincoln. Kansas-Nebraska Act Sec. 14. That the Constitution and all the laws of the United States which are not locally inapplicable shall have the same force and effect within the said Territory of Nebraska (or Kansas, the language being the same in reference to both,) as elsewhere within the United States, except the 8th 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 principles of non-intervention by Congress with slavery in the States and Territories, as recognised 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. Provided, That nothing herein contained shall be construed to revive or put in force any law or regulation which may have existed prior to the act of 6th March, 1820, either protecting, establishing, prohibiting, or abolishing slavery. Fifth Joint Debate, at Galesburg Mr. Douglas’s Speech Ladies and Gentlemen: Four years ago I appeared before the people of Knox County for the purpose of defending my political action upon the Compromise Measures of 1850 and the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska bill. Those of you before me who were present then will remember that I vindicated myself for supporting those two measures by the fact that they rested upon the great fundamental principle that the people of each State and each Territory of this Union have the right, and ought to be permitted to exercise the right, of regulating their own domestic concerns in their own way, subject to no other limitation or restriction than that which the Constitution of the United States imposes upon them. I then called upon the people of Illinois to decide whether that principle of self-government was right or wrong. If it was and is right, then the Compromise Measures of 1850 were right, and consequently, Lincoln-Douglas Debate 703 the Kansas and Nebraska bill, based upon the same principle , must necessarily have been right. The Kansas and Nebraska bill declared, in so many words, that it was the true intent and meaning of the Act not to legislate slavery into any State or Territory, 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. For the last four years I have devoted all my energies, in private and public, to commend that principle to the American people. Whatever else may be said in condemnation or support of my political course, I apprehend that no honest man will doubt the fidelity with which, under all circumstances, I have stood by it. During the last year a question arose in...

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