From Sectional Crisis to Southern Secession

During the 1850s, a profusion of abolitionist lectures, conventions, and literature swelled antislavery sentiment in the North. Mainstream newspapers regularly covered rescues of fugitives, the Dred Scott case, and the bloody crisis in Kansas. Republican candidates in state and local elections also kept concerns about slavery’s expansion and southern power alive. Nothing, however, riveted the nation’s attention as much as John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. Less than a year later, Republican Abraham Lincoln captured the White House. In the wake of his election, South Carolina seceded from the Union.