Abolition
North and South had agreed, again, both sides getting some of what they wanted. The Compromise of 1850 didn't satisfy everyone, however. Many in the South were worried that it was still possible that the balance of power would be disrupted, as more and more states joined the Union. Another group of people, particularly in the North but also in some areas in the South, were the abolitionists, people who wanted slavery eradicated throughout the country. The first official abolition group in the U.S. was formed in Philadelphia in 1775. New York followed soon after. Northern states eventually outlawed slavery. Slaveowners in Delaware and Maryland gradually emancipated their slaves, as did a significant number in Virginia. Such practices were rare in the Deep South, where much of the economy was driven by slave labor.

Taking the early lead in campaigning for the abolition of slavery were the Quakers, members of the Society of Friends. Joining the Quakers in the objections to the practice of slavery on moral grounds were the Methodist and other churches, in the wake of the Second Great Awakening in the 1820s and 1830s. By contrast, many churches, especially in the South, used religious arguments to justify the maintenance of slavery.

A number of abolitionist groups began in the early 19th Century. One of the most famous was the American Anti-Slavery Society, founded by William Lloyd Garrison (left), a newspaper publisher. His abolitionist paper The Liberator was a major force in the abolitionist movement for many years. Minister Theodore Weld and free African-American Robert Purvis were instrumental in the founding of Garrison's organization. One of the famous members was former slave Frederick Douglass.

Joining in the abolitionist movement were many prominent women, including Angela Grimké, Sarah Grimké, and Lucretia Mott, later one of the leaders of the women's suffrage movement. Later joining Mott in the drive for abolition were fellow suffrage movement leaders Susan B. Anthony and Lucy Stone. Other famous female abolitionists included Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, the famed "conductor" on the Underground Railroad, a loose network of safe houses and escape routes that runaway slaves used in order to escape the horrors of slavery in the South.

One of the most influential publications in the history of the abolition movement was Uncle Tom's Cabin, a novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe that described in often horrendous scenarios the life that African-American slaves endured in the South. The book first appeared in 1852 and was very widely read across the country. Stowe later said that she wrote the book in part as a reaction to the strengthened Fugitive Slave Law that was part of the Compromise of 1850.

Possibly the most famous act of insurrection in the abolition movement was the seizing of the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry by John Brown. This 1859 series of events, which ended with Brown's capture and eventual execution, also helped galvanize sentiment against the horrors of slavery.

Brown was a prominent abolitionist who advocated a violent end to slavery. He wanted to take the weapons from the Harpers Ferry arsenal and distribute them to slaves, in order to facilitate an armed uprising. Other abolitionists favored violence, if needed, to end slavery, arguing that the end would justify the means. One of the more prominent of these was Henry Ward Beecher, brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Beecher sent guns to aid the anti-slavery effort in Kansas, saying that one gun was worth a hundred Bibles. The guns came to be known as "Beecher's Bibles."

The Kansas-Nebraska Act created the Kansas Territory and the Nebraska Territory and left the question of whether to allow slavery up to the territories' residents. This was the clearest advent yet of Stephen A. Douglas's idea of Popular Sovereignty. The struggle to decide the slavery question in Kansas led to an unprecedented level of violence, resulting in the territory's being called "Bleeding Kansas". The residents of that territory submitted not one but two constitutions, one pro-slavery and one anti-slavery. Congress eventually accepted the latter, and Kansas became a state in 1861. (Nebraska became a state after the Civil War, and so slavery was prohibited by law.)

Another act of violence took place within the halls of Congress, on the Senate floor. In the midst of the struggle over slavery in Kansas, after a particularly vicious attack by pro-slavery forces on the city of Lawrence, Massachusetts Sen. Charles Sumner, an avowed abolitionist, gave a speech in the Senate that he titled "The Crime Against Kansas." He used incendiary language, calling the thugs who had sacked Lawrence "murderous robbers from Missouri." Sumner spoke for two days, during which he personally attacked South Carolina Sen. Andrew Butler. A congressional colleague of Butler, Rep. Preston Brooks (who was also Butler's nephew), thought that Sumner had gone too far and, two days later, confronted Sumner on the Senate floor and struck him repeatedly with a metal-tipped cane, in the process shattering the cane. Only the intercession of others stopped the assault. Sumner was severely injured and did not appear in the Senate again for several years. The House fined Brooks, who then resigned. The response was from the North was outrage. The Southern response was of a different tenor. Brooks was re-elected, and many in South Carolina sent him replacement canes.

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