What impact did the Kansas--Nebraska Act have?

First, what was the Kansas-Nebraska
Act?  In 1854 the question of what to do with all the unorganized lands that the United
States owned.  Would slavery be allowed in those lands or not?  How to
decide...

Stephen Douglas, the Illinois Senator, came up
with what was to be known as the "Kansas-Nebraska Act."  This law would create the
territories of Kansas and Nebraska and allow the people who moved there to vote on
whether they wanted slavery or not.  Sounds like a good compromise, but in the end it
didn't work out so hot.

Both sides of the slavery debate
(abolitionists and pro slavery) rushed to move people into the states to win the vote.
 Pro Slavery people largely came from Missouri while Anti-slavery people came from
further East.  It was such a hot issue that the two groups came into bloody conflict
with one-another.  At one point, two separate governments were set up in different towns
(one free, one slavery.) There's a reason they called it "Bleeding
Kansas."

In one instance, an abolitionist named John Brown
"captured" five pro-slavery farmers and murdered them in retaliation for murders
committed by pro-slavery forces.

In the end, Kansas was
admitted to the Union as a Free State, but the turmoil caused by the law actually helped
further fracture the nation and propelled the country toward civil war.  it brought to a
head the bitter divide that was cracking the country in two.