ABSTRACT
The sensitivity of some of their leaders was such that they could even perceive an abolitionist taint in Franklin Pierce. In January 1854, Stephen A. Douglas presented to the Senate his first version of his Kansas-Nebraska Bill, an effort to begin organization of that vast territory. Republican Party first flung out its banner in the Northwest, where social roots were less deep, politicians less committed. With a Whig machine disintegrated and a proslavery Democratic machine in operation, the movement toward a new party followed immediately after the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. With free-soil sensibilities rampant, the Kansas struggle came to a head. Kansas was a practical problem in national politics, as well as in homesteading and real-estate opportunities. Theirs was an effort to find a program which could ward off the sectional conflict and give demoralized Whigs a home. The opening of Kansas to settlement brought to that frontier every type of homesteader and every shade of political opinion.
