Railroad self-interest drove the Kansas-Nebraska Act that repealed Missouri Compromise.

Evidence

US SENATOR STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS of Illinois desired to give statehood to the territories of Nebraska and Kansas in order to build through these states a transcontinental railroad. Douglas and his benefactors envisioned this railroad transforming the flourishing Mississippi Valley into the nation’s epicenter. To secure crucial southern support, the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 left the slavery question to be settled by the settlers, thus repealing the Missouri Compromise. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 536

Categorization

• XREF: Directly instances Kendi’s core inversion: economic/political self-interest (the railroad) precedes and produces the slavery-everywhere policy change — the very causal order the reader is mastering.