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The Fugitive Slave Act made it a crime to help runaway slaves and allowed official 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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Slavery is when the condition in which one human being owned by another person.

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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. He now had another plan to help the nation maintain peace. His ideas were designed to give both sides things that they wanted:

1. California would enter the Union as a free state.

2. The rest of the Mexican Cession would be federal land. In this territory, popular sovereignty would decide on slavery.

3. Texas would give up land east of the upper Rio Grande. In return, the government would pay Texas's debts from when it was an independent republic.

4. The slave trade- but not slavery-would end in the nation's capital.

5. A more effective fugitive slave law would be passed.

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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. Slave narratives also educated people about their hardships.

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In his inaugural address, President Pierce expressed his hope that the slavery issue had been put to rest. But less then a year later however a proposal to build a railroad to the West coast helped revive the slavery controversy and opened a new period of sectional conflict.

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Four leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination emerged in 1852. It became clear that none of them would win a majority of votes. Frustrated delegates at the Democratic National Convention turned to Franklin Pierce, a little-known politician from New Hampshire. Pierce promised to honor the Compromise of 1850 and the Fugitive Slave Act. Therefore, southerners trusted Pierce o the issue of slavery.

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By early 1856 Kansas had two opposing governments, and the population was angry. Settlers had moved to Kansas to homestead in peace, but the controversy over slavery began to affect everyone.

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Brown attacked the federal arsenal in Virginia.

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Lincoln was elected which angered the South.

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South Carolina was the first state to leave the U.S.A.

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A country created by the other southern states.

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A free slave that fought for his freedom in court.

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The Dred Scott Decision: Crash Course Black American History #16

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Maine became a free state and Missouri became a slave state.

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What Was the Missouri Compromise? | History