Despite popular fury at the measure, Democratic president Franklin Pierce put enormous pressure on members of the House to pass it. They did, finally, on May 8, 1854. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act turned the Democratic Party into the party of slaveholders. In the 1854 elections, voters in the North threw Democrats out of office; only those in the most extreme districts managed to hold onto power. By 1855, moderate Democrats were gone, and slave owners had taken control of the national party.
