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The force of events moved very quickly upon the election of Lincoln. South Carolina acted first, calling for a convention to secede from the Union. State by state, conventions were held, and the Confederacy was formed. Within three months of Lincoln's election, seven states had seceded from the Union.

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On November 6, 1860, Lincoln was elected the 16th president of the United States, beating Douglas, Breckinridge, and Bell. He was the first president from the Republican Party.

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John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry. John Brown's raidon Harper's Ferry (also known as John Brown's raid or The raid on Harper's Ferry) was an effort by armed abolitionist John Brown to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

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Historians have traditionally regarded the series of seven debates between Stephen A. Douglas and Abraham Lincoln during the 1858 Illinois state election campaign as among the most significant statements in American political history. The issues they discussed were not only of critical importance to the sectional conflict over slavery and states’ rights but also touched deeper questions that would continue to influence political discourse. As Lincoln said, the issues would be discussed long after “these poor tongues of Judge Douglas and myself shall be silent.”

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Dred Scott decision, formally Dred Scott v. John F.A. Sandford, legal case in which the U.S supreme court on March 6, 1857, ruled (7–2) that a slave (Dred Scott) who had resided in a free state and territory (where Slavery was prohibited) was not thereby entitled to his freedom; that African Americans were not and could never be citizens of the United States; and that the Missouri compromise (1820), which had declared free all territories west of Missouri and north of latitude 36°30′, was unconstitutional. The decision added fuel to the sectional controversy and pushed the country closer to civil war.

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As North-South tensions heightened, so did Sumner’s rhetoric. In his Crime against Kansas speech, delivered in May 1856, he lambasted southern efforts to extend slavery into Kansas and attacked his colleague, Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina. Shortly after that speech, Butler’s cousin, Congressman Preston Brooks, assaulted Sumner on the Senate floor. He spent three and a half years recovering from the beating.

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Bleeding Kansas. Bleeding Kansas, Bloody Kansas or the Border War was a series of violent confrontations in the United States between 1854 and 1861 which emerged from a political and ideological debate over the legality of slavery in the proposed state of Kansas.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on May 30, 1854. It allowed people in the territories of Kansas and Nebraska to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders. The Act served to repeal the Missouri Compromise of 1820 which prohibited slavery north of latitude 36°30´.

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The Fugitive Slave Acts were congressional statutes passed in 1793 and 1850 that permitted for the seizure and return of runaway slaves who escaped from one state and fled into another . The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, as a part of the Compromise of 1850, required that the U.S. government actively intervene to help slave owners regain control over their slaves. This act dictated that fugitive slaves were neither allowed to testify on their own behalf, nor were they allowed to have a trial by jury. This was “justified” through legislators’ claims that African Americans could not be United States citizens and thus were not afforded any protections.

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Senator Henry Clay introduced a series of resolutions on January 29, 1850, in an attempt to seek a compromise and avert a crisis between North and South. As part of the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act was amended and the slave trade in Washington, D.C., was abolished.

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They were collectively known as the Compromise of 1850. On September 9, 1850, California finally became the 31st state. Law and order could be restored in the new state.

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The Missouri Compromise—also referred to as the Compromise of 1820—was an agreement between the pro- and anti-slavery factions regulating slavery in the western territories. It prohibited slavery in new states north of the border of the Arkansas territory, excluding Missouri.

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In the history of slavery in the United States, "fugitive slaves" (also known as runaway slaves) were slaves who left their master and traveled without authorization; generally they tried to reach states or territories where slavery was banned, including Canada, or, until 1821, Spanish Florida.

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The Missouri Compromise was criticized by many southerners because it established the principle that Congress could make laws regarding slavery; northerners, on the other hand, condemned it for acquiescing in the expansion of slavery (though only south of the compromise line). Nevertheless, the act helped hold the Union together for more than thirty years. It was repealed by the Kansas- Nebraska Act of 1854, which established popular sovereignty (local choice) regarding slavery in Kansas and Nebraska, though both were north of the compromise line. Three years later, the Supreme court in the Dred Scott case declared the Missouri Compromise unconstitutional, on the ground that Congress was prohibited by the Fifth Amendment from depriving individuals of private property without due process of law.

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In an effort to preserve the balance of power in Congress between slave and free states, the Missouri Compromise was passed in 1820 admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state. Furthermore, with the exception of Missouri, this law prohibited slavery in the Louisiana Territory north of the 36° 30´ latitude line. In 1854, the Missouri Compromise was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Three years later the Missouri Compromise was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision, which ruled that Congress did not have the authority to prohibit slavery in the territories.