Bleeding Kansas: Avoidable or Inevitable?

Bleeding Kansas: Avoidable or Inevitable?

On May 22, 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed the U.S Congress. This long and grueling debate had destroyed the Whig Party, formed the Republican Party, and had confirmed the division of the United States into North and South. The Kansas-Nebraska Act was a bill introduced to Congress that would organize the Nebraska territory, which included the area that would become the state of Kansas (Collins 6). This bill was proposed by a man named Augustus C. Dodge, but referred to the Committee of the Territories by Stephen A. Douglas, who was Illinois’ attorney at the age of 21, and a U.S. Senator by the age of 35. Douglas was a strong believer in the Manifest Destiny, the idea that the United States had the God-given right to take over as much land as possible and the spread its influence, and wasn’t the only one. A Philadelphia newspaper told of the Manifest Destiny as “East by sunrise, West by sunset, North by the Arctic Expedit...