Kansas-Nebraska Act is adopted in Washington, D.C.

Signed by President Franklin Pierce, the bill was passed a few days earlier by the U.S. House and by the U.S. Senate, despite a petition against it signed by more than 3,000 Bostonians. The new law effectively repeals the Missouri Compromise by allowing each new state to decide the slavery issue for itself. Its passage [the Burns case-Puleo] prompts Bostonian Amos Lawrence to write to Giles Richards, “We went to bed one night, old-fashioned, conservative, compromise, Union Whigs, and waked up stark mad Abolitionists” on June 1, 1854.