1. Challenges to Slavery
Section Two

2. Republican Party
In 1854, antislavery Democrats left the party to join the new Republican Party.
The Republican Party quickly won many seats in the House in the North leaving the Democratic Party a Southern party.

3. Democratic Party

4. John C. Fremont (Republican)
Presidential Candidates 1856
John C. Fremont (Republican)
JAMES BUCHANAN (DEMOCRAT)
MILLARD FILLMORE (KNOW NOTHING)
In 1856, the Republican Party chose John C. Fremont and the Democratic Party chose James Buchanan while the Know Nothing Party chose former President Fillmore.

5. Election of 1856
Buchanan won the election as it went straight down regional lines. Fremont did not get a single Southern vote.

6. Dred Scott
In 1846, a slave named Dred Scott traveled from Missouri, a slave state, with his owner to Illinois and then the Wisconsin Territory, a free territory. They then returned back to Missouri where his owner died.
Antislavery lawyers sued for his freedom based on the fact that Scott had lived in a free territory, so he should have been set free.

7. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney
In 1857, the United States Supreme Court argued that Scott was property and had no rights as a citizen. Also, that slavery could NOT be banned in any U.S. Territory by Congress or popular sovereignty.

8. Dred Scott Decision

9. The North and South reacted differently: the South was elated while the North was outraged.

10. Lincoln-Douglas debates
Lincoln thought slavery was wrong and needed to be halted.
Douglas did not like slavery, but did not want to divide the nation.
In 1858, Stephen Douglas debated Abraham Lincoln over the issue of slavery.

11. Lincoln Loses
The Lincoln-Douglas debates were a series of 7 debates between Abraham Lincoln (Republican) and Stephen Douglas (Democrat) as they ran for a Senate seat in Illinois. Although Illinois was a free state, the main issue discussed was slavery in U.S.

12. Return of John Brown
In 1859, John Brown led 18 men on an attack of the U.S. arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. He wanted to steal weapons to give to slaves, leading to an uprising.
Brown was captured and tried for treason. He was found guilty and executed. He became a martyr for the abolitionists.