The Civil War resulted from the insistence of Southern "firebrands" that the 1820 restrictions on where slavery could be practiced in the Western territories of the USA be removed. And the dogged determination of some Northerners to restrict the brutal treatment of blacks and finally put slavery on the road to extinction. In the 1850's big shoes dropped one after another in staccato fashion to dash such hopes. The final straws were the Dred Scott Decision in 1857 saying blacks weren't even people and Congress had no power to restrict slavery anywhere And Civil War was going on in "bleeding Kansas" between adherents of the two stances. John Brown was radicalized there by the sacking of Abolitionist stronghold Lawrence. He and his sons killed some Jayhawkers (slavery adherents) from Missouri. Then Brown, his sons, and a few others, lit a fuse in Oct 1859 by a hare brained scheme to seize the Federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry to arm slaves and precipitate action to free them. So when Lincoln was elected in 1860-the South bolted As they had threatened for 15 years. America was almost destroyed. Until July 4, 1863 when two Union victories insured: "that these honored dead (800,000) shall not have died in vain" Abraham Lincoln Gettysburg, Pa Nov. 1863.