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On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first slave state in the south to declare that it had seceded from the United States.

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A series of seven debates between Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Illinois, and Senator Stephen Douglas, the Democratic Party candidate.

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A legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court on March 6, 1857, ruled that slave Dred Scott, who had resided in a free state and territory, was not thereby entitled to his freedom.

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An antislavery novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe that spoke out powerfully against slavery. The author moved to Ohio when she was 21. There she met fugitive slaves and learned about the cruelties of slavery. Stowe was greatly angered by the Fugitive Slave Act, and decided to write a book that could educate northerners about the realities of slavery.

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Made it a crime to help runaway slaves and allowed officials to arrest those slaves in free areas. Slaveholders were permitted to take suspected fugitives to U.S. commissioners, who decided their fate.

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John Brown and some of his followers murdered 5 proslavery men near the Pottawatomie Creek.

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A network of secret routes and safe houses established in the United States during the early to mid-19th century, and used by African-American slaves to escape into free states.

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A plan introduced by Stephen Douglas 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. The act would eliminate the Missouri Compromise’s restriction on slavery north of the 36°30’ line.

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Sound Smart: The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 | History

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John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry was an effort to initiate an armed slave revolt in 1859 by taking over a United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia.

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African-American Slave

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Abolitionist

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Former United States Senator

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16th U.S. President