Anger, suspicion, and recrimination characterized American politics in the 1850s. One major party wound up on history’s proverbial ash heap. Another, this one explicitly antislavery, rose in its stead. The eastern part of Kansas Territory turned into an armed camp as proslavery and antislavery guerrillas crisscrossed it; Charles Sumner’s blood stained the floor of the United States Senate; a former slaveowner serving as chief justice of the United States ruled that blacks were not American citizens regardless of where they were born; and a terrorist who happened to be on the right side of history tried to initiate a slave uprising in Virginia with his small band of fantasists and fanatics. After more than a decade of increasing tension over the question of bondage, the nation could no longer resolve its political differences either legislatively or at the ballot box. Abraham Lincoln, who represented the new Republican party, won the presidency without earning a single Southern vote in the electoral college. In the months after, seven Southern states pulled out the Union.