Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, the question of slavery remained a thorny political issue in the United States. Because the anti-slavery movement in the North was itself divided, a united front against Southern interests never materialized — until the outbreak of the Civil War. Anti-slavery activists belonged to different political camps. The Garrison camp reminded its followers of a higher moral law, that of God, and demanded immediate cessation of slavery on moral grounds. Another faction, the Liberty party, sought to change the status of slaves through reform, through working within the political system. The Free-Soil party, which evolved from the Liberty party, while retaining an anti-slavery platform, wanted to forbid slavery only in the new states and territories.
The Fugitive Slave Act was part of a last-ditch attempt to preserve the Union. Instead, it intensified the differences between the North and South. In 1854, Northern Whigs, anti-slavery Democrats, and Free-Soil party members assembled in Ripon, Wisconsin, to form a new political organization, the Republican party. The anti-slavery forces greeted the nomination and subsequent election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in 1860 as politically positive for their cause. The Southern states, however, reacted by moving toward secession. In February 1861, the Southern states chose Jefferson Davis as the Provisional President of the Confederate States. With the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina by Confederate troops on April 12, 1861, the Civil War began.
