CONFRONTATION

The following year, the country was further stirred by the serial publication of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. Published as a book in 1852, the antislavery novel was widely read in the North, West, and South. Many Northern and Western readers became more accepting of abolitionism, while Southerners angrily denounced the book.

Congress passed the Kansas-Nebraska Act, introduced by U.S. Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Democrat of Illinois, in 1854. The act repealed the Missouri Compromise, allowing territories to independently decide on the issue of slavery. Many Northerners were outraged, and both Northerners and Southerners responded by sending settlers into the territories to oppose or promote slavery. Tensions escalated and a series of conflicts known as the Border War broke out. Combined with the Compromise of 1850 and the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the dispute over Kansas and Nebraska triggered a massive political shift in American politics that allowed antislavery groups to found the Republican Party. By 1856 the party had enough support to run a candidate for president, and by 1860 the party had supplanted the once-popular Whig Party.

In 1857 the Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the territories. The Court's ill-constructed reasoning and the polemical nature of its opinion further galvanized abolitionists. The following year, Republican Abraham Lincoln challenged Douglas for his seat in the U.S. Senate. In a series of debates, Lincoln argued eloquently against extending slavery to the territories, swaying many Northerners and thus provoking fears in many Southerners. Although the Illinois legislature reelected Douglas, the Republican Party swept the state and gained considerable national influence. In 1859 John Brown conducted his ill-fated raid on a federal outpost at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, from which he intended to march an army of liberation to free slaves in the South. Captured, convicted, and executed, Brown became a martyr for Northern abolitionists and a reminder to the South that abolitionists were increasingly willing to fight to end slavery.

The final blow to national unity was the presidential election of 1860, which focused almost exclusively on slavery. At their nominating convention in April, Southern Democrats refused to support Northerner Stephen Douglas because of his moderate position on slavery. The Southerners walked out of the convention and eventually nominated their own presidential candidate, John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky. Northern Democrats rallied behind Douglas. The Republicans nominated Lincoln, who won easily in November against the divided Democrats. Several leading Southerners had cautioned that if the Republicans won the election, the South might secede. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina was the first state to act on this promise. Throughout January and February, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas also seceded. Shortly after Lincoln took office in March, he called on states to send militias to suppress the rebellion. The remaining Southern states—Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee—refused to send troops and seceded in April and June. Lincoln apparently hoped that the states would rejoin the Union without coercion, but this hope vanished on April 12, 1861, when Confederate forces attacked federal troops at Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina.

Dred Scott sued for his freedom in a case which reached the United States Supreme Court. The Court ruled against Scott, deciding in 1857 that the government could not make citizens either free or slaves and that no black could claim U.S. citizenship.