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the 19th-century movement of settlers into the American West -
admitting Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state -
five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states -
allowed for the capture and return of runaway enslaved people within the territory of the United States -
the story of Uncle Tom, an enslaved person, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe -
The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the Missouri Compromise, created two new territories -
the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling declared that having lived in a free state and territory did not entitle an enslaved person to his freedom -
John browns raid to initiate a slave revolt in Southern states by taking over the United States arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia -
elected Abraham Lincoln -
south succeeds after election -
Confederate troops fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina's Charleston Harbor