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It prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30' but let Missouri become a slave state. In the 1840's President James K. Polk wanted to extend the 36°30' line to the West coast, dividing the Mexican Cession into two parts; one free and one enslaved.

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1. California would enter the Union as a free state. 2. The rest of the Mexican Cession would be federal land. In this territory, popular sovereignty would decide on slavery. 3. Texas would give up land east of the upper Rio Grande. In return, the government would pay Texas’s debts from when it was an independent republic. 4. The slave trade, but not slavery, would end in the nation’s capital. 5. A more effective fugitive slave law would be passed.

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Slaveholders could use testimony from white witnesses, but enslaved African Americans accused of being fugitives could not testify. Nor could people who hid or helped a runaway slave; they faced six months in jail and a $1,000 fine.

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Abolitionists in the North used the stories of fugitive slaves like James Hamlet and Anthony Burns to gain sympathy for their cause. Slave narratives also educated people about their hardships.

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Four leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination emerged in 1852. It became clear that none of them would win a majority of votes. Pierce promised to honor the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Therefore, southerners trusted Pierce on the issue of slavery.

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President Pierce expressed his hope that the slavery issue had been put to rest “and that no sectional; excitement may again threaten the durability of our institutions.” Less than a year later, however, a proposal to build a railroad to the West coast helped revive the slavery controversy and opened a new period of sectional conflict.

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In April 1856 a congressional committee arrived in Kansas to decide which government was legitimate. Although committee members declared the election of the pro-slavery legislature to be unfair, the federal government did not agree.

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Democrat Stephen Douglas had predicted that the Kansas-Nebraska Act would “raise a...storm.” He was right. The Kansas-Nebraska Act brought the slavery issue back into the national spotlight.

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Just two days after Buchanan became president, the Supreme Court issued a historic ruling about slavery. News of the decision threw the country back into crisis. The Court reviewed and decided the complex case involving an enslaved man named Dred Scott.

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In each debate, Lincoln stressed that the central issue of the campaign was the spread of slavery in the West. He said that the Democrats were trying to spread slavery across the nation.

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Lincoln's Breakthrough at the Lincoln-Douglas Debates | Abraham Lincoln

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On the night of October 16, 1859, John Brown’s raid began when he and his men took over the arsenal in Harpers Ferry,

Virginia, in hopes of starting a slave rebellion. He sent several of his men into the countryside to get slaves to join him.

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History Bites: John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry

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The northern and southern Democrats could not agree on a candidate. Northern Democrats chose Senator Stephen Douglas. Southern Democrats backed the current vice president, John C Breckinridge of Kentucky, who supported slavery in the territories.

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Lincoln insisted that he would not change slavery in the South. However, he said that slavery could not expand and thus would eventually die out completely. That idea angered many southerners.