Kansas-Nebraska Act Condemned by NY Free Soilers

A broadside condemning the recent passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act on May 30, 1854, issued by committee members of the "New York State Convention of the Free Democracy" who had sympathies with the Free Soil and Republican Parties. Signed in print at the conclusion by John P. Hale (1806-1873) of New Hampshire; Hiram Barney (1811-1895) of New York; and John Jay (1817-1894) of New York. October 1854. New York, New York. The broadside, entitled "Free Democratic Address to the People of the State of New York," consists of three closely printed columns. Expected wear including flattened folds and scattered minor water stains affecting the outer edges, else clean, legible, and near fine. 9.125" x 14.75."

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was intended to demarcate the boundaries of two Western territories, Kansas and Nebraska. Yet it effectively reopened the question of territorial slavery and repealed the crux of the 1820 Missouri Compromise, which had banned slavery north of latitude 36°30.' The Kansas-Nebraska Act split the Democratic Party, the party of sitting 14th U.S. President Franklin Pierce; led to the creation of the Republican Party; and paved the way for a Republican presidential victory in 1860.

The broadside denounces the "perfidy" of the proponents of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Its authors also condemned how the passage of the Act overthrew the 1820 Missouri Compromise; how the Act would support the "curse of slavery"; and how the Act would threaten white working men. "The true issue is before you - economically the policy of the slave power is to depreciate the value of labor, by multiplying laborers to whom no wages are to be paid…Politically, the slave power aims to rule the country by a slaveholding oligarchy, to extend their property representation through our western expense - to sway with despotic rule the general government, and devote its energies and resources to the conversion of the western continent into a slave empire…"

OCLC 28479577 [1 - Syracuse], 79055522 [2 - AAS, Yale]. Not in LCP, Sabin, Blockson, or Dumond.

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