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In an early effort to stop slavery, the American Colonization Society, founded in 1816, proposed the idea of freeing slaves and sending them back to Africa. This solution was thought to be a compromise between antislavery activists and slavery supporters.
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The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which allowed Missouri to become a slave state, further provoked anti-slave sentiment in the North.
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The abolitionist movement began as a more organized, radical and immediate effort to end slavery than earlier campaigns. It officially emerged around 1830.
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In 1833, a white student at Lane Theological Seminary named Amos Dresser was publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee, for possessing abolitionist literature while traveling through the city.
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In 1837, a pro-slavery mob attacked a warehouse in Alton, Illinois, in an attempt to destroy abolitionist press materials. During the raid, they shot and killed newspaper editor and abolitionist Elijah Lovejoy.
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In 1850, Congress passed the controversial Fugitive Slave Act, which required all escaped enslaved people to be returned to their owners and American citizens to cooperate with the captures.
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After the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 was passed, both pro-and anti-slavery groups inhabited the Kansas Territory.
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In 1856, a pro-slavery group attacked the town of Lawrence, which was founded by abolitionists from Massachusetts. In retaliation, abolitionist John Brown organized a raid that killed five pro-slavery settlers.
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Then, in 1859, Brown led 21 men to capture the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He and his followers were seized by a group of Marines and convicted of treason. Brown was hanged for the crime.
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President Abraham Lincoln opposed slavery but was cautious about fully supporting the more radical ideas of the abolitionists. As the power struggle between the North and the South reached its peak, the Civil War broke out in 1861.
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As the bloody war waged on, Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, calling for the freeing of enslaved people in areas of the rebellion.
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And in 1865, the Constitution was ratified to include the Thirteenth Amendment, which officially abolished all forms of slavery in the United States.