The Dred Scott decision in the Supreme Court - they ruled that slavery was legal in every state of the Union because when the Founding Fathers declared that a man's property was sacred, they would have included slaves within their definition of property.
This divided the nation even more sharply, and provoked the Lincoln-Douglas debates, which brought slavery to the top of the agenda.
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The decision to allow the people of Kansas to vote whether their new state would be slave or free.
This thinly-populated territory attracted all manner of cross-border raiders from both sides of the debate, determined to intimidate voters and get the results declared invalid.
There was terrible bloodshed, and it seemed to demonstrate that the slavery debate would never be resolved, except through combat.
The slave-question that caused the new Compromise of 1850 was the admission of California as free soil.
Lands were gained gained as a result of the Mexican-American War.
The emotive issue was the new, stricter version of the Fugitive Slave Act, which caused many Northerners to join the Abolitionist movement.
An event's historical context is the social or political setting in which it occurred.
It began for economic reasons and quickly became a political event.
the reconstruction era of the United States
The event that was seen as the last straw before Texas choose to secede was the election of Abraham Lincoln and his anti-slavery platform.
Slavery IMPROVEMENT The election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the US.