The only way that congress could make the Compromise of 1850 work was to keep slavery out of congress, and that's just what congressman Stephen A. Douglas did. In the 1850's American's were beginning to want bigger and better things. They wanted roads, railroads and train stations to bring more wealth to their smaller towns (New Orleans, St. Louis, and Chicago). Although Douglas wanted the main train station to run though his hometown of Chicago; however, railroads could only go through land that had already been politically organized and surveyed and the land has been granted for railroads. So Douglas proposed a bill to organize the land west of Iowa and Missouri, and the final bill that Douglas had, also provided for Kansas and Nebraska. Unfortunately the bill wouldn't pass because those states were closed to slavery and the south wouldn't vote for it. This caused the Compromise of 1820 to change to the Compromise of 1850, which had Kansas and Missouri states free of slaves or not. So after nine months of debate, the Kansas and Nebraska act passed in 1854.