=Slavery Trouble Brings on the Civil War.= This was in 1820, about the time of the beginning of the Santa Fe trade. During the years when Kansas was an Indian country and was traversed by countless caravans the country remained bound by the terms of this compromise. But all this time the feeling of animosity between the North and the South was growing more intense; northern churches and newspapers denounced the evils of slavery, free-state and abolition parties developed, thousands of slaves were assisted in making their escape through the North to Canada in spite of the strict fugitive slave law, and there was bitter strife in Congress between the free-state and the slave-state members. The relations between the North and the South were becoming more and more strained. The time was rapidly approaching when the differences between the two sections were to be settled by a great war. =The Conflict Brought into Kansas in 1854.= The Civil War began in 1861, the same year in which Kansas became a state; but seven years earlier, in 1854, Congress had passed a measure that brought the slavery trouble into Kansas and made this state the battle ground in the great national struggle over the slavery question. =The Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 1854.= The measure passed by Congress that played such an important part in the history of Kansas and of the Nation was known as the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, and was the work of Senator Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois. It provided that the two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, should be organized, and that the question of slavery should be left for the people of each territory to decide for themselves. This method of settling the question was known as “popular sovereignty.” Because the settlers were often called squatters it was frequently called “squatter sovereignty.” =Reception of the Bill.= Kansas and Nebraska were part of the territory which, according to the terms of the Missouri Compromise, was to be forever free, but under the Douglas bill they were to become either slave or free as the people who settled the territories might decide. When this bill was introduced into Congress it raised a storm of indignation among those opposed to slavery, and the debate which ensued lasted for months. The whole North was aroused and poured forth objection and protest, but to no avail. The bill was passed May 30, 1854.