This work demonstrates the importance of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in stirring sectional awareness and tension in Texas. It also analyzes the continuing impact of the measure on Texas politics and public opinion from 1854 until secession in 1861. Texas newspapers of the 1850s were the principal source for this study, supplemented by historical journals and other works. Organized chronologically and topically, this study traces Texans' attitudes and opinions concerning the extension-of-slavery controversy from their showing little interest in the issue prior to 1854 to their demand for secession in 1861. Texans considered slavery inseparable from their prosperity and welfare. Their determination to preserve it caused them to become a part of the disastrous secession movement.

Between 1830 and 1844, the Mormons slightly shifted their position on African-American slavery, but maintained the middle ground on the issue overall. When Mormons began gathering to Utah in 1847, Southern converts brought their black slaves with them to the Great Basin. In 1852 the first Utah Territorial legislature passed “An Act in Relation to Service" that legalized slavery in Utah. This action was prompted primarily by the need to regulate slavery and contextualize its practice within the Mormon belief system. Ironically, had Congress known of Utah's slave population, it may have never granted Utah the power to legislate on slavery. During the debates over the Compromise of 1850, which series of acts created Utah Territory without restriction on slavery, Utah lobbyist John M. Bernhisel hid Utah slavery from members of Congress. Several years later, when Utah's laws were under review by Congressional committees, the public announcement of polygamy overshadowed information that betrayed slavery's practice in Utah. The fact that slavery's practice in Utah was never widely known, especially by members of Congress, delayed for nearly four years the final sectional crisis that would culminate in civil war. Utah may have been a peculiar place for the “peculiar institution" of slavery, but its legalization in the territory, and Congress' failure to acknowledge it, provide a compelling case study of popular sovereignty in action in the antebellum West.

The work examines the antislavery writings of Francis Wayland (1796-1865). Wayland pastored churches in Boston and Providence, but he left his indelible mark as the fourth and twenty-eight year president of Brown University (1827-1855). The author of numerous works on moral science, economics, philosophy, education, and the Baptist denomination, his administration marked a transitional stage in the emergence of American colleges from a classically oriented curriculum to an educational philosophy based on science and modern languages. Wayland left an enduring legacy at Brown, but it was his antislavery writings that brought him the most notoriety and controversy. Developed throughout his writings, rather than systematically in a major work, his antislavery views were shaped and tested in the political and intellectual climate of the antebellum world in which he lived. First developed in The Elements of Moral Science (1835), he tested the boundaries of activism in The Limitations of Human Responsibility (1838), and publicly debated antislavery in Domestic Slavery Considered as a Scriptural Institution (1845). The political crisis from the Mexican-American War through the Kansas-Nebraska Act heightened Wayland’s activism as delineated in The Duty of Obedience to the Civil Magistrate (1847), his noncompliance with the Fugitive Slave Law, and his public address on the Kansas-Nebraska Bill (1854). In 1861 he became a committed Unionist. I argue that Francis Wayland was a mediating figure in the controversy between abolitionists and proslavery apologists and that his life was a microcosm of the transition that many individuals made from moderate antislavery to abolitionism. Wayland proved unique in that he was heavily coveted by Northern abolitionists who sought his unconditional support and yet he was respected by Southerners who appreciated his uncondemning attitude toward slaveholders even while he opposed slavery. I argue that Wayland’s transition from reluctant critic to public activist was not solely due to the political sweep of events, but that his latter activism was already marked in his earlier work. Most importantly, his life demonstrated both the limits and possibilities in the history of American antislavery.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Although the main emphasis of this study is Lane and his part in the Republican Party, another important part to this thesis is the examination of Indiana and national politics in the 1850s. This thesis studies the development of the Hoosier Republican Party and the obstacles the young organization experienced as it transformed into a major political party. Party leaders generally focused on states like New York and Pennsylvania in national elections but Indiana became increasingly significant leading up to the 1860 election. Though Hoosier names like George Julian and Schuyler Colfax might be more recognizable nationally for their role in the Republican Party, this thesis argues that Lane played a guiding role in the development of the new third party in Indiana. Through the study of primary sources, it is clear that Hoosiers turned to Lane to lead the organization of the Republican Party and to lead it to its success in elections. Historians have long acknowledged Lane’s involvement in the 1860 Republican National Convention but fail to fully realize his significance in Indiana throughout the 1850s. This thesis argues that Lane was a vital leader in Hoosier politics and helped transform the Republican Party in Indiana from a grassroots movement into a powerful political party by 1860.