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The Compromise of 1850 included the Fugitive Slave Act, which became largely disputed within the northern free states. The Fugitive Slave Act stipulated that citizens of free states were required to return slaves found in the North. The Act also denied a fugitive's right to a jury trial. -
the controversial bill raised the possibility that slavery could be extended into territories where it had once been banned. Its passage intensified the bitter debate over slavery in the United States, which would later explode into the Civil War. -
Bleeding Kansas was a mini civil war between pro- and anti-slavery forces that occurred in Kansas from 1856 to 1865. ... The Kansas-Nebraska Act had allowed the people residing in the Kansas Territory to decide for themselves whether or not to permit slavery. -
The Dred Scott case destroyed the delicate agreement between slave and free states and created national anger that helped lead to the Civil War. -
The “real issue” in his contest with Douglas, Lincoln insisted, was the issue of right and wrong, and he charged that his opponent was trying to uphold a wrong. Douglas was disturbed by Lincoln's effort to resolve a controversial moral question by political means, warning that it could lead to civil war. -
Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons. The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. Brown's raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War. -
Near the end of the American Civil War, incumbent President Abraham Lincoln of the National Union Party easily defeated the Democratic nominee, former General George B. McClellan, by a wide margin of 212–21 in the electoral college, with 55% of the popular vote.