2nd lecture in Kansas-Nebraska Act sesquicentennial series is Oct. 4

The second in a series of four lectures celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Kansas-Nebraska Act will examine why Nebraska was so much more peaceful than Kansas in the aftermath of the act's passage.

In "Where Popular Sovereignty Worked: The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Nebraska Territory," Professor Nicole Etcheson of the University of Texas at El Paso will compare the events from the 1850s in the two states and consider the concept of a bleeding Kansas and a bruised Nebraska. Etcheson is a scholar of American political history and recently published "Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era."

The lecture will be from 7:30-9 p.m. Oct. 4 in the Warner Senate Chambers of the Nebraska Capitol Building. It is free and open to the public.

Etcheson's lecture is the second in a four-part lecture series sponsored by the Nebraska Humanities Council and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, "Nebraska and the Kansas-Nebraska Act: Celebrating the Sesquicentennial, 1854-2004." The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 allowed settlers in the newly created territories of Kansas and Nebraska to choose between free soil and slavery. It effectively repealed the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which had prohibited slavery in new territories north of the southern boundary of Missouri.

For more information, please call professors Ken Winkle or Margaret Jacobs at the UNL History Department, (402) 472-2414.

CONTACTS: Ken Winkle, Professor & Chair, History, (402) 472-2414; and Margaret Jacobs, Assoc. Professor, History, (402) 472-2417