Question

After the Kansas-Nebraska Act passed, Northerners headed for Kansas because.
A. The Climate and rich soil promised better farming than the North could offer.
B. They wanted to create an antislavery majority there.
C. Jobs working on the transcontintental railroad were available there.
D. Southern immigrants there were campaigning to secede from the Union.

Answer 1

I would say the least wrong answer is A, because C and D are both completely false (the first transcontinental railroad was started in 1863, and secession certainly couldn't have been contemplated before Kansas even became a state), and because I doubt very much large numbers of people up stakes and move their whole families and way of life for purely political reasons, as in B. Then, as now, people generally move for reasons of economy or liberty -- to seek a better life for themselves.

However, the difficulty with A is that the climate and soil of Kansas are in fact not as good as in the places from which the immigrants would've come, e.g. Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky. However, the very important fact would've been that in Illinois, Indiana, et cetera, the land was already settled, and if you didn't already own some, it would be difficult and expensive to acquire it. In the new territories, however, there was land free for the taking, essentially. It offered a way for landless and poor people to acquire land and gradually build a better life for themselves. That was, I suspect, the motivation for most people who moved to the territory.