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With Lincoln's victory, delegates from the South met to discuss secession. On December 20th, 1860, South Carolina decided to leave the Union, with six more states following shortly after, becoming the Confederate States of America.

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Lincoln's presidential victory showed the South that they were the minority, and could no longer shape national events or policies.

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A group of slaves recruited by John Brown was armed with weapons from the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia and went around murdering slave-owning families.

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a series of political debates between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, who were candidates in the Illinois race for U.S. Senator, in which slavery was the main issue.

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a Supreme Court decision in 1857 that held that African Americans could never be citizens of the United States and that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional.

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After making a speech calling out fellow senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina, Charles Sumner was beaten with a metal tipped cane until it broke in half by a relative of Butler and House member Preston Brooks.

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Both pro-slavery and anti-slavery settlers attempted to inhabit Kansas, so, things turned violent. People started fighting. It was basically a small scale civil war.

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This act opens up the Great Plains to settlement and nullifies the Missouri Compromise by allowing the territory to choose whether to allow slavery. Eventually, it results in violence throughout Kansas and antislavery and pro-slavery settlers battle for control of the territory.

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When the Compromise of 1850 failed, the South wanted the right to reclaim their "property." But at the same time the North didn't want to do it for them.

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When California applies for statehood as a free state, some Southerners threaten to secede. Congress resolves the crisis by redefining where slavery is permitted in the territories and enacting a stronger fugitive slave law.

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In 1849, California applied to enter the Union as a free state. The Northerners in Congress accepted them with open arms, while the Southerners rejected them, saying it would upset the balance between slave and free states.

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In territories that were not yet states, like the recently acquired Texas and other Mexican territories .

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Some Northerners worked to free slaves from their Southern captors, but Congress passed a law requiring slaves to be returned to their owners even if they were in the North.

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The Missouri Compromise worked for a few years, but with the Second Great Awakening happening, many people saw slavery as a very outdated and immoral practice.

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An agreement made by Congress in 1820 under which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine was admitted as a free state. Also created an imaginary line in which any future state north of the line would be a free state and south of the line would be a slave state.