The Kansas-Nebraska Act intensified sectional tensions over which issue?

• A. Tariffs
• B. Slavery in new territories
• C. States' rights
• D. Immigration

Answer: (B)

The key idea here is how to handle the expansion of slavery into newly organized territories. The Kansas-Nebraska Act set up popular sovereignty, letting residents of Kansas and Nebraska decide whether slavery would be legal there. This directly reopened the heated debate over whether new western territories would be free or slave states, and it effectively overturned the Missouri Compromise’s attempt to keep slavery out of certain areas north of the line. The result was fierce local battles between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions, violent clashes known as Bleeding Kansas, and a deepening national rift between free and slaveholding interests. Other issues like tariffs, states’ rights, or immigration weren’t the focus of this act, so the intensified tension centered on slavery in the new territories.