May 2025 • Nebraskaland 39
the famous Missouri Compromise was repealed.
It's hard to overstate the sense of shock and betrayal
among many Northern voters. "We were thunderstruck and
stunned; and we reeled and fell in utter confusion," said
Abraham Lincoln in a speech in Peoria, Illinois, on Oct. 16.
"But we rose each fi ghting, grasping whatever he could
fi rst reach — a scythe — a pitchfork — a chopping axe, or a
butcher's cleaver."
Lincoln was speaking metaphorically, but the violence
soon became real as free-state and pro-slavery settlers
fought each other in "Bleeding Kansas." Nebraska saw little
violence, but Nebraska City and Falls City soon became
stopping points for Northern settlers pouring into Kansas
— and for smaller numbers of enslaved people making their
way to freedom.
The new Republican Party coalesced from the ruins of
the now-defunct Whig Party and anti-Nebraska Democrats.
Slavery was the big issue. Even so, few white people were
abolitionists. (Nebraska had legal slavery until 1861.) Fewer
still believed in racial equality. Mostly, they feared that
aristocratic Southern planters were about to dominate the
entire country.
Did "Nebraska" really start the Civil War? In fairness, it
was part of a long chain of events, but it was a turning point.
From then on, the nation increasingly became what Lincoln
called "a house divided."
N
Visit NSHS's website at history.nebraska.gov.
Nebraska City, as pictured in Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, Jan. 8, 1859. NSHS RG2294-0-11
Bellevue, circa-1855, illustration by Polish artist S.W.Y. Schimonsky. NSHS RG2683-0-2
