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The Senate committee held its first meeting on December 20, 1860. In Charleston, South Carolina, delegates attending a state convention voted that the same day--December 20, 1860--to leave the Union. Six more states soon followed South Carolina's lead, and in February 1861, those states joined together as the Confederate States of America.

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Lincoln won the election with just 40% of the votes, all of them cast in the North, while he wasn't even on the ballot in the Southern states. The South was now in the minority. Southerners feared sooner or later, Congress would try to abolish slavery. This means, "the loss of liberty, property, home, country, everything that makes life worth having."

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When Lincoln fought to stop the spread of slavery through politics, abolitionist John Brown adopted a more extreme approach. Brown planned to seize the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia to use the weapons to arm slaves for a rebellion that would end slavery. Brown was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Southerners had fear of Southern blood would be spilled if a slave rebellion began. Northerners viewed Brown as a hero.

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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. Lincoln lost the election.

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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. Many Northerners, however, were stunned and enraged by the Court's ruling. Southerners hoped that at long last, the issue of slavery in the territories had been settled and in their favor.

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In 1856, Sumner gave a speech "The Crime Against Kansas" in shocking language, he described it as a violent assault on an innocent territory, "compelling it to the hateful  embrace of slavery." Two days after his speech, a relative Senator Butler, South Carolina representative Preston Brooks, attacked Sumner in the Senate, beating him with his metal tipped can until it broke in half. Many Southerners applauded Brooks for defending the honor of his family and the South. Most Northerners viewed the beating as another example of  Southern brutality.

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The South started to send their young men to Kansas, while the North abolitionists raised money to send weapons to antislavery settlers. Before long, there were 2 governments in the territory for and against slavery. Invaders ruined everything. Brown and several followers killed 5 men who were suspected of supporting slavery.

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The Nebraska-Kansas act created two new territories known as, Kansas and Nebraska. It also abolished the Missouri Compromise by leaving it up to the settlers themselves to vote on whether to permit slavery in the two territories. Northerners were haunted by visions of slavery marching across the plains.

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The Fugitive Slave Act was passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. People in the North and 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. Northerners' refusal to support the slave act infuriated slaveholders, and it also made enforcement of the act almost impossible.

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The agreements made in order to admit California into the Union as a free state. These agreements included allowing the New Mexico and Utah territories to decide whether to allow slavery, outlawing the slave trade in Washington D.C. , and creating a stronger fugitive slave law. Northerners easily accepted the terms of the Compromise of 1850, while the Southerners still remained wary of the compromise and didn't put their suspicions to rest after it had been passed.

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In late 1849, California applied for admission to the Union as a free state. Northerners in Congress welcomed California with open arms, but Southerners rejected California's request. The warned that if California became a free state, it would upset the balance of slave and free states. The year ended with Congress deadlocked over California's request for statehood.

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Pennsylvania representative David Wilmot added an amendment to the bill known as the Wilmot Proviso. The Wilmot Proviso stated that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist" in any part of the territory that might be acquired from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War. Southerners opposed Wilmot's amendment.

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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. Slaveholders demanded that Congress pass a fugitive slave law to help them recapture their property.

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As John Adams predicted, for a time the "contest" over slavery was settled, however it was not and soon the issue lead to a Second Great Awakening. The year ended with Congress deadlocking California's request for statehood. Once again, Southerners spoke openly of with drawing from the Union and angry Northerners denounced slavery as a crime against humanity.

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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. Congress also drew an imaginary line across the Louisiana Purchase and North of this line slavery was to be banned forever, except for in Missouri, whereas slave holding was permitted South of the line.