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Harriet Tubman was an abolitionist slave who helped other slaves escape captivity through the Underground Railroad. In 1849, she used it to escape from slavery herself.
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Stated that escaped slaves in the North could be hunted and brought back South with their owners, meaning that no black person was safe anywhere in the Union.
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Uncle Tom's Cabin, an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was published.
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Stated that the states of Kansas and Nebraska could decide as a state whether or not they wanted to be slave states, effectively repealing the Missouri Compromise.
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The supreme court case Scott vs. Sandford, it was decided that Dread Scott, a slave who sued his owner for his freedom, was still a slave, and could not file a lawsuit because he was not an American citizen.
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A series of 7 presidential debates between the Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln, and Democratic nominee Stephen Douglass.
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John Brown, a radical abolitionist, raided Harpers Ferry with the hopes of starting a slave rebellion, but was quickly stopped, and was soon after hanged for treason.
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The first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, is elected into office. However, he is not received well by the South.
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South Carolina became the first southern state to recede from the Union.
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The Southern states leave the Union and form their own nation: the Confederate States of America.