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The newly passed Fugitive Slave Act made it a crime to help runaway

slaves and allowed officials to arrest those slaves in free areas.

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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.

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Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky had helped to settle the Missouri crisis of

1819–20 and the nullification crisis of 1832–33 by proposing compromises.

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In

response, antislavery northerners formed a new party, the Free-

Soil Party, which supported the Wilmot Proviso.

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Four leading candidates for the Demo-

cratic presidential nomination emerged

in 1852.

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a plan that would divide the remainder of the

Louisiana Purchase into two territories—Kansas and Nebraska—and

allow the people in each territory to decide on the question of slavery.

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By early 1856 Kansas had two opposing governments, and the population

was angry.

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Bleeding Kansas (The Kansas-Nebraska Act and Its Consequences)

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In 1858 Illinois Republicans nominated Abraham Lincoln for the U.S.

Senate.

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In 1858 John Brown tried to start an uprising. He wanted to

attack the federal arsenal in Virginia and seize weapons there.

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In this climate of distrust, Americans prepared for another presidential

election in 1860.

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The Election of 1860 & the Road to Disunion: Crash Course US History #18

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Just two days after Buchanan became president, the Supreme Court issued a historic ruling about slavery.

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Congress also reacted to the violence of the Sack of Lawerence, Senetor Charles Summer of Massachusetts criticized pro-slavery people in Kansas and personally insulted Andrew Pickens Butler, a pro-slavery senator from South Carolina.

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Lincoln insisted that he would not change slavery in the South.