A Different—And Slower—World

We're just going to rip the Band-Aid right off and say, right here and now, that things in the United States are different today than they were in 1854.

We'll give everyone a moment to recover from the shock of this information.

And we're not just talking about hairstyles or the price of bacon, either.

In fact, so much has changed in the U S of A since the 1850s that it would take hours—no, days—no, years—to cover it all. So we're going to focus on three gihugic changes that were at least partially brought about by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and its rippling ramifications.

First, let's talk geography. In 1853, the United States had thirty-one states and five territories. Hawaii was still its own kingdom, Alaska belonged to the Russians, and pretty much the entire middle of the country was a large area known either as "Indian Territory" or "Unorganized Territory."

Thanks to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the "Unorganized Territory" became organized, incorporated, and—most importantly—totally officially 100% American. This set the stage for the creation of the states we now know as Kansas and Nebraska (obviously), as well as Oklahoma, Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and both Dakotas. That map of the continental U.S. we're all so familiar with that kind of looks like a bag of pastel mini-marshmallows? The Kansas-Nebraska Act made that map possible.

And once the land itself belonged to the United States, that made something else a lot more possible: cross-country travel by rail.

Ah, yes. Seeing the country through the windows of a railroad car. It's a romantic notion now (at least, for people who don't suffer from motion sickness), but back in the 1850s, traveling by train was the fastest way to go and represented the latest and greatest in mass-transpo technology. And the Kansas-Nebraska Act was instrumental in making sure that people and supplies could be schlepped from the Atlantic to the Pacific—and back again—with ease.

Midwestern Power Player

And finally, the creation of the Nebraska and Kansas Territories played a major role in terms of civil rights.

When we think "civil rights," maybe we think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1960s. Or maybe we think of Susan B. Anthony and suffrage for women. Or maybe we think of the LGBTQ movement taking place today. But the concept of American civil rights is as old as our country, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act is a big piece of that concept's evolution.

Before Kansas-Nebraska, slavery was real and voting and property rights for women, people of color, and a large proportion of poor people were pretty much…not real.

Now we're not saying the Kansas-Nebraska Act fixed those issues, because it didn't. At least, not all by itself, and totally not intentionally. But what it did do was force questions about civil rights, especially slavery, into the national spotlight in a big, big way. And though the focus of civil rights movements has differed in the century and a half since, the principles behind those movements—liberty, justice, equality—have remained in that spotlight ever since.

If all the world really is a stage and the evolution of the United States of America is the show, we're totally nominating the Kansas-Nebraska Act for Best Supporting Actor.