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In the 1860 presidential election the country was very divided. Republicans were behind Lincoln, North Democrats were behind Stephen Douglas, and southern democrats supported John C. Breckinridge. With the votes split three ways, Lincoln won.

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After the election, there was talk of a secession. Worried, a group of senators created a committee to find an alternate solution. In Illinois, President Lincoln was asked whether he would support a compromise on slavery. Lincoln replied with a firm no. In South Carolina, delegates were gathered to leave the union. After South Carolina six more states followed. Those seven states became the Confederacy States of America.

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In the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, Douglas argued that the Dred-Scott Decision had helped calm the slavery issue. Lincoln, on the other hand, disagreed saying that the people's sentiments towards slavery is the problem. Even though Lincoln lost the debates, his words helped him become a national figure.

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Dred Scott had once accompanied his owner to Wisconsin which was a free state so Scott believed that he was now a free man. He decided to sue his owner for his freedom in the Supreme Court. The court ruled that Scott had no right to sue.

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Senator Charles Sumner shared his theory that Senator Stephen Douglas had plotted with Southerners to make Kansas a slave state in a passionate speech. Many people praised Sumner for his speech but southerners were outraged. Two days after the speech the South Carolina representative, Preston Brooks, beat Sumner with his cane so brutally that it took Sumner three years to recover.

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Northerners and Southerners flooded into Kansas. Eventually their differences on slavery turned violent. Invaders burned a hotel, stole from several homes, and threw the printing presses of two abolitionist newspapers.

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The Nebraska-Kansas Act created two new territories. They were called Nebraska and Kansas. Northerners were angered by this act because it abolished the Missouri Compromise.

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The Fugitive Slave Act made Southerners and Northerners both upset. Southerners felt that the act did not do enough to ensure they would get their property back. Northerners did not want to have to enforce the act.

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In 1850, Henry Clay proposed a new compromise. This compromise would have something for everyone. California would be added as a free state, the New Mexico and Utah territories would be able to decide if they wanted to allow slavery, and he ended slave trade in Washington D.C. Slaveholders would also get their fugitive slave law that they demanded.

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Many slaves escaped with help from people in the North. Southerners saw this as their property being stolen so they demanded Congress pass a law against fugitive slaves.

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It was a compromise for Missouri to be a slave states and Maine a free state. This way both slave and free states had equal power.

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During the 1830s there were many abolitionists arguing that Congress did not have the power to decide if a state was free or slave. So in 1839 Congress voted that all antislavery petitions be set aside. Citizens call this the "Gag Rule" because "gagged" the debate over slavery.