# data[].attributes.body
In the weeks following the election, talk of secession filled the air. Alarmed senators formed a committee to search for yet another compromise that might hold the nation together. They knew that finding one would not be easy, but they still had to do something to stop the rush toward disunion and disaster.

# data[].attributes.body
For white Southerners, the election of 1860 delivered an unmistakable message. The South was now in the minority. It no longer had the power to shape national events or policies, and Southerners feared that, sooner or later, Congress would try to abolish slavery. And that, wrote a South Carolina newspaper, would mean “the loss of liberty, property, home, country—everything that makes life worth having.”

# data[].attributes.body
While Lincoln fought to stop the spread of slavery through politics, abolitionist John Brown adopted a more extreme approach. Rather than wait for Congress to act, Brown planned to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. An arsenal is a place where weapons and ammunition are stored.Brown wanted to use the weapons to arm slaves for a rebellion that would end slavery.

# data[].attributes.body
Lincoln's opponent in the Senate race was Senator Stephen Douglas, an Illinois senator who saw no reason why the nation could not go on half-slave and half-free.When Lincoln challenged him to debate the slavery issue, Douglas agreed.

# data[].attributes.body
In 1856, Sumner voiced his suspicions in a passionate speech called “The Crime Against Kansas.” In harsh, shocking language, Sumner described the “crime against Kansas” as a violent assault on an innocent territory, “compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery.”

He dismissed Douglas as “a noisome [offensive], squat, and nameless animal.” Sumner also heaped abuse on many Southerners, including Senator Andrew P. Butler of South Carolina.

# data[].attributes.body
Northerners who were already horrified by slavery were roused to fury by two events in 1854: the publication of the so-called Ostend Manifesto and the Kansas-Nebraska Act.

# data[].attributes.body
People in the North and the South were unhappy with the Fugitive Slave Act, though for different reasons.Northerners did not want to enforce the act, whereas Southerners felt the act did not do enough to ensure the return of their escaped property.

# data[].attributes.body
As a compromise, Southerners proposed a bill that would extend the Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific. Slavery would be banned north of that line and allowed south of it.Northerners in Congress rejected this proposal.

Then, late in 1849, California applied for admission to the Union as a free state.

# data[].attributes.body
After the Kansas-Nebraska Act was passed in 1854, settlers poured into Kansas. Most were peaceful farmers looking for good farmland, but some settlers moved to Kansas either to support or to oppose slavery. In the South, towns sent their young men to Kansas, and in the North, abolitionists raised money to send weapons to antislavery settlers. Before long, Kansas had two competing governments in the territory, one for slavery and one against it.

# data[].attributes.body
Clay's new compromise had something to please just about everyone. It began by admitting California to the Union as a free state, which would please the North. Meanwhile, it allowed the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide whether to allow slavery, which would please the South.

# data[].attributes.body
Nat Turner's rebellion was one of the largest slave revolts, but individual slaves also continued to rebel by running away to freedom in the North. These fugitives from slavery were often helped in their escape by sympathetic people in the North.

# data[].attributes.body
An agreement made by Congress in 1820 under which Missouri was admitted to the Union as a slave state and Maine was admitted to the Union as a free state. It also created an imaginary line in which any future states north of this line would be a free state and south of this state would be a slave states.