the Kansas-Nebraska Act
/ðə ˌkænzəs nəˈbræskə ækt/
/ðə ˌkænzəs nəˈbræskə ækt/
- a law passed by the US Congress in 1854 which was one of the causes of the Civil War. It replaced the Missouri Compromise and established the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory as regions which could vote on whether to keep people as slaves or not. This caused people to come from both the South and the North to fight about the issue, until ' bleeding Kansas' had two rival governments.
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the Kansas-Nebraska Act