The Kansas-Nebraska Act was proposed by Stephen A. Douglas in 1854 as a way to organize the territory of Nebraska. The southern senators objected this because the Kansas territory lay north of latitude 36°30′, the compromise line. In response, Douglas suggested to create two territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and let the settlers decide if the states would be free or slave states. Presumably, the more northern territory would oppose slavery while the more southern one would permit it. But by the time Kansas was admitted into statehood, the southern states had already started to leave the union, rendering the act useless.