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In weeks following the election, Southerners start thinking of seceding from the Union; the Senate committee started to work for another compromise to keep the nation together, but then, Lincoln stated, "Let there be no compromise. South Carolina seceded from the Union, and 6 states quickly followed suit, and they created the Confederate states of America.

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Lincoln won the election of 1860 with just 40% of the votes, all of which were cast from the North. This showed the South that they were just a minority at this point, and that what they did couldn't affect anymore, and they couldn't help shape national events or politics, making white Southerners fear that slavery would be abolished, which would take away everything that makes life worth living.

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John Brown, an impatient abolitionist, took a more violent path, gathering up people to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, where all the weapons were stored. He took these weapons and began to go around, killed Southerners; in the end, all of them were either captured or killed, and John Brown was sentenced to treason and was hung, but this scared the South, and the North viewed Brown as a hero.

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Lincoln's opponent in the senate race of Senator Douglas, and Lincoln challenged him to debate over slavery, which Douglas agreed to. In the debates, Douglas stated that it was over in the Dred Scott decision, but Lincoln said that it was more of a moral issue than a legal issue; Lincoln lost the election, but the debates were widely reported, making Lincoln a national figure and bringing the moral issue of slavery into a sharp view.

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A slave from Missouri named Dred Scott traveled to Wisconsin with his owner, and when they returned to Missouri, Dred Scott went to court to try to get to freedom, arguing that his time in Wisconsin had made him a free man, since the Missouri Compromise bans all slavery in Wisconsin. Chief Justice Taney decided that Dred Scott's stay in Wisconsin did not make him a free man, since slaves are property, not people, and property cannot be taken from people without proper court hearing, and that this would make it so that all slaves would become free after traveling with their slave owners somewhere, so it was unconstitutional; this make the South happy, but the North was outraged.

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Charles Summer, Senator Of Massachusetts, was greatly disturbed by the violence in Kansas, and he thought that it was the result of Senator Stephen Douglas plotting with Southerners to make Kansas a slave state, so he voiced all this in his speech "The Crime Against Kansas" in 1856, where he verbally attacked Senator Douglas and many Southerners. The nephew of Andrew P. Butler, who was Senator of South Carolina, beat Summer with a cane until it broke since he was so enraged by his speech.

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Many settlers poured into Kansas, some there either to support or to go against slavery. The struggle of slavery in Kansas soon became violent, and armed invaders supporting slavery burned a hotel, looted several homes, and destroyed the printing presses of two abolitionist papers, angering many Northerners.

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In 1854, Stephen A. Douglas, Senator of Illinois, released the final version of a bill that he had tried passing before about building a railroad in California. This final version created two new territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and letting settlers decide themselves whether or not slavery would be allowed, completely overriding the Missouri Compromise.

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Even though the Fugitive Slave Act was passed, it almost did nothing for slaveholders in the South. People in the North did literally nothing to enforce the act, and Southerners felt that not enough was done to ensure that their slaves were returned to them, fueling the loathing between the North and the South to even stronger and stronger.

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In 1850, Henry Clay, a senator of Kentucky, met with Daniel Webster, senator of Massachusetts. Henry Clay had an idea for a compromise that would end the deadlock over California. The compromise basically had something everyone could benefit from; California would be admitted to the Union as a free state, New Mexico and Utah would allowed to decide whether to allow slavery, slave trade would be stopped in Washington, DC, and a strong fugitive slave law would be passed to make it easier to find and reclaim runaway slaves. Clay thought that the North and abolitionists would be happy that California would be admitted as a free state and that slave trade would be stopped in Washington, DC, and that Southerners would be happy that New Mexico and Utah would be able to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery and that a strong fugitive law would be passed so slaveholders won't lost as many runaway slaves anymore.

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California wanted to be admitted to the US as a free state in 1849. This led to a bit argument between the North and the South, as the North supported their admission, while the South was strongly against it and said that it would unbalance the slave and free states.

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In 1846, the Mexican American war took place, and the representative of Pennsylvania, David Wilmot, tried adding an amendment call the Wilmot proviso. This angered Southerners, as they thought that the Congress had no right to decide where slaveholders could take their property; the amendment passed the House, but not the Senate.

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Slaves were running away from their owners to freedom in the North, where sympathetic Northerners helped the slaves escape, thinking that slavery just wasn't right. This made the South dislike the North even more, since they saw these people as robbers, stealing their property, which were the slaves.

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The Second Great Awakening brought about many ideas about "doing the Lord's work," which included abolishing slavery. So, the Congress was filled with petitions about abolishing slavery, and the Congress voted to enact the "gag rule," where all antislavery petitions would be set aside.

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It let Missouri become a slave state, and Maine was admitted as a free state, and since Missouri joined as a slave state, few Northerners liked the compromise. A line was also drawn on the Louisiana Purchase, where anywhere above the line besides Missouri slavery was banned, making Southerners dislike the compromise as well.