's political arena as well. As Western lands were brought into the Union, Southern congressmen jockeyed to have them admitted as slave states; Northerners, on the other hand, sought to include them as "free" states whereslavery was not allowed. In the 1850s the government cobbled together a number of notable agreements designed to prevent a rupture in the Union. In the Compromise of 1850, the United States turned its attention to Western territories gained in the War with Mexico a few years before; California was admitted as a free state and slavery was prohibited in the District of Columbia, but the legislation called for state citizenry to determine the presence or absence of slavery in New Mexico and Utah, a principle known as popular sovereignty. The Compromise also included a controversial new Fugitive Slave Act that enabled slave owners to retrieve runaway slaves more easily from the North. Only four years later, however, a new law left the uneasy truce of 1850 broken in the dust. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 jettisoned the 1820 Missouri Compromise (which had outlawed slavery in territories north of Missouri's southern boundary), calling instead for an arrangement wherein territories seeking statehood were left to decide for themselves whether to allow slavery within their respective borders. The Act outraged many Northerners and sparked the dissolution of the Whig Party and the creation of the Republican Party (largely composed of Whig Party remnants and Northern Democrats who were unhappy with their party's pro-South stance). By 1860 the South viewed the Republican Party, which boasted a number of important abolitionist voices, as a direct threat to their way of life. The 1854 legislation also resulted in bloodshed and escalating ill will between America's Northern and Southern blocs. In 1855, when Kansans were called on to vote on whether to allow slavery, thousands of pro-slavery Missourians poured into Kansas to vote illeg...
