September 22, 2011
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 9/22/2011
Booklet, "Duties of Massachusetts at this Crisis." 8pp. quarto, "A SPEECH of Hon. CHARLES SUMNER, delivered at the Republican Convention at Worcester, Sept. 7, 1854." with good content on the position of Massachusetts as an opponent of slavery in the United States. About very good condition. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, opened new lands that would help settlement in them, repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, and allowed settlers in those territories to determine if they would allow slavery within their boundaries and to settle there. The initial purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska Act was to create opportunities for a Mideastern Transcontinental Railroad. It became problematic when popular sovereignty was written into the proposal. The act was designed by Democratic Senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. The act established that settlers could vote to decide whether to allow slavery, in the name of popular sovereignty or rule of the people. Douglas hoped that would ease relations between the North and the South, because the South could expand slavery to new territories but the North still had the right to abolish slavery in its states. Instead, opponents denounced the law as a concession to the slave power of the South. The new Republican Party, which was created in opposition to the act, aimed to stop the expansion of slavery and soon emerged as the dominant force throughout the North. The final vote in favor of the bill was 113 to 100. Northern Democrats split in favor of the bill by a narrow 44 to 42 vote, while all 45 northern Whigs opposed it. In the South, Democrats voted in favor by 57 to 2 and Whigs by a closer 12 to 7. President Pierce signed the bill into law on May 30, 1854.
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