in the District of Columbia and admission of California as a free state. Another part of the compromise was the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, which provided for the return of runaway slaves to their masters. But many free states in the Union passed personal liberty laws in an effort to help the slaves escape. Many Northerners set up underground railroads where the runaway slaves could hide and get food and be directed to Canada for freedom. This angered many Southerners. This compromise also said that the territory east of California given to the United States by Mexico was divided into the territories of New Mexico and Utah, and they were opened to settlement by both slaveholders and antislavery settlers. This measure outdated the Missouri Compromise of 1820. All these compromise measures resulted in a gradual intensification of the hostility between the slave and free states. Again another law was passed in 1854. It was called the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It authorized the creation of Kansas and Nebraska, west of Missouri and Iowa and divided by the 40th parallel. It repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that had prohibited slavery in the territories north of 36 30, and stated that the inhabitants of the territories should decide for themselves the legality of slaveholding. This act was sponsored by the Democratic senator Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois. He hoped to simplify construction of a transcontinental railroad through these states rather than through the southern part of the country. The removal of the restriction on the expansion of slavery ensured southern support for the bill, which was signed into law by President Franklin Pierce on May 30, 1854. This act split the Democratic Party and destroyed the Whig party also. The northern Whigs joined antislavery Democrats to form the Republican Party in July 1854. A conflict developed in Kansas between pro-slavery settlers from Missouri and antislavery newcomers who began to move into...
