A Hell of a Storm: The Battle for Kansas, the End of Compromise, and the Coming of the Civil War

Brown (history, Elizabethtown Coll.; The First Populist) examines the fallout from the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, contending that this legislation propelled the nation into the Civil War. With an even delivery, narrator Jacques Roy draws listeners in, carefully relaying the explosive events set off by the passage of the act, which repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and allowed white residents of the newly formed Kansas and Nebraska territories to vote on whether or not to permit enslavement locally. The act deepened divisions within the country, prompting previously “genteel” abolitionists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson to take a public stand. Brown’s analysis is especially compelling as he connects the events of the 1850s with the current national landscape. Lecture circuit speeches and the publication of abolitionist pamphlets, essays, and novels motivated a younger generation and fomented sectarian strife, strongly paralleling the impact that today’s social media has had on policing, the Black Lives Matter movement, and even states’ rights.