Nebraska Territory

Territory of Nebraska is an incorporated, organized territory of the United States that existed from May 30, 1854 until March 1, 1867.

US incorporated territory
Nebraska Territory
English Territory of Nebraska
Nebraska Border Changes
← → → → → 1854 - 1867
Capital	Omaha
Form of government	Incorporated Organized Territory

After the Louisiana purchase of 1803 and the signing of the Adams-Onis Treaty in 1819, the United States considered the northern portion of the Great Plains and the eastern portion of the northern Rocky Mountains south of the Canadian border to be their own. However, these lands were sparsely populated and lacked state power structures.

In the early 1840s, a discussion arose about the possibility of building a transcontinental railway. Public opinion was in agreement with the fact that the road should be built with private money, but in this case it should have brought money to the owners through the transportation of passengers and goods. Therefore, to make the road economically viable, it was necessary to create government structures to organize the settlement of desert lands in the central United States. However, the Missouri compromise of 1820 prohibited slavery on these lands, and representatives of the slave states were afraid that the creation of new Territories there, which would later be accepted into the United States as states, would change the balance between slave and abolitionist states. As a result, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Law was passed, which opened the lands west of the Mississippi and the northern part of the USA for settlement, formed the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory there, and decided that the inhabitants of these lands will decide in the future whether to allow slavery there or not. .

Initially, the territory included the lands of the modern states of Nebraska , Wyoming , North Dakota , South Dakota , Colorado and Montana . Omaha became the administrative center of the Territory. Already in 1861, the lands lying south of the 41st parallel and west of the meridian 102 ° 03 ′ were allocated to a separate Territory of Colorado , and the lands lying north of the 43rd parallel - to the Territory of Dakota . In 1863, small portions of land from Washington Territory and Utah Territory were attached to Nebraska, but then the lands west of the 104 ° 03 ′ meridian were transferred to the freshly created Idaho Territory .

Nebraska was inhabited mainly by immigrants from the northern part of the United States, so anti-slavery sentiments were strong there. When the civil war broke out , the U.S. Army had to leave a number of forts to go to the theater of operations, and the US Congress demanded that the residents of Nebraska form a volunteer regiment that could protect the population from Indian attacks in the absence of the army. In June-July 1861, the first Nebraska volunteer regiment was formed, which, however, did not stay at home, and was also sent east to fight against the Confederation under the command of General Grant . In 1863, the regiment was converted from infantry to cavalry, and returned to the Great Plains to control the Indians.

In 1864, the Constitutional Convention of the Nebraska Territory was held, which, however, did not elaborate a Constitution. In 1866, the text of the Constitution was written and adopted, but its paragraph, speaking about the rights for “free white men,” slowed down Nebraska’s transformation into a state for a whole year: the president Andrew Johnson vetoed the corresponding act. In 1867, the US Congress passed the act of Nebraska joining the United States as a state, provided that an amendment to its Constitution that removes the discriminatory clause is passed. The president vetoed this act, but it was overcome by Congress.