Civil war in China between the Nationalists and the Communists broke out in 1927. In 1931, Communist leader Mao Zedong was elected chairman of the newly established Soviet Republic of China, based in Jiangxi province in the southeast. Between 1930 and 1934, the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek launched a series of five encirclement campaigns against the Soviet Republic. Under the leadership of Mao, the Communists employed guerrilla tactics to resist successfully the first four campaigns, but in the fifth, Chiang raised 700,000 troops and built fortifications around the Communist positions. Hundreds of thousands of peasants were killed or died of starvation in the siege, and Mao was removed as chairman by the Communist Central Committee. The new Communist leadership employed more conventional warfare tactics, and its Red Army was decimated.

With defeat imminent, the Communists decided to break out of the encirclement at its weakest points. The Long March began at 5:00 p.m. on October 16, 1934. Secrecy and rear-guard actions confused the Nationalists, and it was several weeks before they realized that the main body of the Red Army had fled. The retreating force initially consisted of 86,000 troops, 15,000 personnel, and 35 women. Weapons and supplies were borne on men’s backs or in horse-drawn carts, and the line of marchers stretched for 50 miles. The Communists generally marched at night, and when the enemy was not near, a long column of torches could be seen snaking over valleys and hills into the distance.

The first disaster came in November, when Nationalist forces blocked the Communists’ route across the Hsiang River. It took a week for the Communists to break through the fortifications and cost them 50,000 men—more than half their number. After that debacle, Mao steadily regained his influence, and in January he was again made chairman during a meeting of the party leaders in the captured city of Tsuni. Mao changed strategy, breaking his force into several columns that would take varying paths to confuse the enemy. There would be no more direct assaults on enemy positions. And the destination would now be Shaanxi Province, in the far northwest, where the Communists hoped to fight the Japanese invaders and earn the respect of China’s masses.

After enduring starvation, aerial bombardment, and almost daily skirmishes with Nationalist forces, Mao halted his columns at the foot of the Great Wall of China on October 20, 1935. Waiting for them were five machine-gun- and red-flag-bearing horsemen. “Welcome, Chairman Mao,” one said. “We represent the Provincial Soviet of Northern Shensi. We have been waiting for you anxiously. All that we have is at your disposal!” The Long March was over.

The Communist marchers crossed 24 rivers and 18 mountain ranges, mostly snow-capped. Only 4,000 troops completed the journey. The majority of those who did not perished. It was the longest continuous march in the history of warfare and marked the emergence of Mao Zedong as the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communists. Learning of the Communists’ heroism and determination in the Long March, thousands of young Chinese traveled to Shensi to enlist in Mao’s Red Army. After fighting the Japanese for a decade, the Chinese Civil War resumed in 1945. Four years later, the Nationalists were defeated, and Mao proclaimed the People’s Republic of China. He served as chairman until his death in 1976.

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The photo of Smith and Carlos with their fists raised on the podium caused a media sensation and remains one of the most iconic images of 20th century sports. But far from a singular incident, their protest was one of a series of antiracist actions undertaken by Black athletes that year. Smith and Carlos were both active in the Olympic Project for Human Rights, a program of boycotts and protests that was largely the brainchild of San Jose State sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards. The OPHR sought to use sports, specifically the Olympics and related events, to expose the myriad ways in which Black athletes were exploited and mistreated.

Formed by Edwards and a group of college athletes, many of whom were in contention for the next summer’s Olympics, the OPHR first made headlines when Black football players at San Jose State threatened not to play the opening game of the season unless the school addressed the systemic racism that Black students faced on campus and in the community. SJSU’s president preemptively cancelled the game, but quickly acceded to many of the players’ demands. Just a few months later, in February of 1968, OPHR members led by Smith and sprinter Lee Evans launched a boycott of the New York Athletic Club’s annual indoor track meet that included over 100 Black athletes, including many future Olympians. The boycott of NYAC, which barred Puerto Ricans, Jews and African Americans from membership, drew further media attention to the OPHR’s cause and led to large protests outside of Madison Square Garden, where the meet was held.

OPHR’s original goal was a Black boycott of the Olympics themselves. Among other institutional issues, activists pointed to the overt anti-Semitism of Avery Brundage, president of the International Olympic Committee, and his attempt to bring apartheid South Africa to the games, which drew threats of a boycott from Black athletes and African nations. Still, many athletes felt they simply could not pass up the opportunity to compete at the Olympics.

The 1968 Olympics were destined to be politically charged, beginning just a few months after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and immediately preceded by a horrendous massacre of hundreds student activists—the exact number remains unknown—by the Mexican government in Tlatelolco Plaza. Against this backdrop, and after a year of strident athlete activism and some progress, Smith and Carlos felt compelled to raise their fists on the podium. Carlos wore black socks with no shoes in recognition of Black poverty, and a beaded necklace to protest lynching. He and Smith shared a pair of black gloves (hence Smith raised his right hand, Carlos his left) while Peter Norman, the Australian who had taken silver, wore an OPHR pin in solidarity with them. Smith and Carlos’ actions were met with boos, and they were vilified by the American press—broadcaster Brent Musburger, then a writer for the Chicago American, called them “a couple of black-skinned storm troopers”—as well as the IOC, which expelled them from the Games.

Smith and Carlos went on to successful careers as athletes and speakers, and continued their activism. “It was a cry for freedom and for human rights,” Smith later said of the protest. “We had to be seen because we couldn’t be heard.”

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Two weeks earlier, the 10 were found guilty by the International War Crimes Tribunal and sentenced to death along with two other Nazi officials. Among those condemned to die by hanging were Joachim von Ribbentrop, Nazi minister of foreign affairs; Hermann Göring, founder of the Gestapo and chief of the German air force; Wilhelm Frick, minister of the interior; and Alfred Rosenberg, head of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories. Others, including Rudolf Hess, Adolf Hitler’s former deputy, were given prison sentences ranging from 10 years to life. Three others were acquitted.

The trial, which had lasted nearly 10 months, was conducted by an international tribunal made up of representatives from the United States, the USSR, France, and Great Britain. It was the first trial of its kind in history, and the defendants faced charges ranging from crimes against peace, to crimes of war and crimes against humanity. On October 16, 10 of the architects of Nazi policy were hanged one by one. Hermann Göring, who at sentencing was called the “leading war aggressor and creator of the oppressive program against the Jews,” died by suicide by poison on the eve of his scheduled execution. Nazi Party leader Martin Bormann was condemned to death in absentia; he is now known to have died in Berlin at the end of the war.

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The rampage at the Central Texas restaurant began at approximately 12:45 p.m. and lasted about 15 minutes. Witnesses reported that the 35-year-old gunman moved methodically through the large crowd, shooting people randomly and reloading his weapon several times. Hennard, of nearby Belton, Texas, was shot several times by police before he committed suicide. No clear motive for his actions was ever determined.

In the aftermath of the Luby’s massacre, Killeen residents urged officials at Luby’s corporate headquarters to let the restaurant re-open so people wouldn’t lose their jobs. Five months after the shootings, the cafeteria was back in business and stayed open for nine more years before permanently shutting its doors in September 2000. Another outcome of the Luby’s massacre was that in 1995 the Texas legislature passed a law allowing residents with gun permits to carry concealed weapons.

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The daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor Francis I, she married Louis in 1770 to strengthen the French-Austrian alliance. At a time of economic turmoil in France, she lived extravagantly and encouraged her husband to resist reform of the monarchy. The increasing revolutionary uproar convinced the king and queen to attempt an escape to Austria in 1791, but they were captured by revolutionary forces and carried back to Paris. In 1792, the French monarchy was abolished, and Louis and Marie-Antoinette were condemned for treason.

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U.S. officials were not terribly surprised by the test; intelligence reports since the 1950s indicated that China was working to develop an atomic bomb, possibly aided by Soviet technicians and scientists. Nevertheless, the successful test did cause concern in the U.S. government. During the early 1960s, China took a particularly radical stance that advocated worldwide revolution against the forces of capitalism, working strenuously to extend its influence in Asia and the new nations of Africa. The test, coming just two months after the Tonkin Gulf Resolution (a congressional resolution giving President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to respond to communist aggression in Vietnam) created a frightening specter of nuclear confrontation and conflict in Southeast Asia.

The test also concerned the Soviet Union; the split between the USSR and communist China over ideological and strategic issues had widened considerably by 1964. The Chinese acquisition of nuclear capabilities only heightened the tensions between the two nations. Indeed, the test might have been a spur to the Soviets to pursue greater efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons; in 1968, the United States and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Little wonder that the Soviets would wish to see China’s nuclear force limited, since the first Chinese intermediate-range missiles were pointedly aimed at Russia. The Cold War nuclear arms race had just become a good deal more complicated.

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The drama unfolded on the morning of October 14, 1987, when McClure fell through the 8-inch-wide opening of an abandoned well while playing with other children in the backyard of her aunt’s home day-care center. After dropping about 22 feet into the well, the little girl became stuck. Over the next two-and-a-half days, crews of rescue workers, mining experts and local volunteers labored around the clock to drill a shaft parallel to the one in which McClure was trapped. They then tunneled horizontally through dense rock to connect the two shafts. A microphone was lowered into the well to keep tabs on the toddler, who could be heard crying, humming and singing throughout the ordeal.

On the night of October 16, a bandaged and dirt-covered but alert Baby Jessica, as she became widely known, was safely pulled out of the well by paramedics. By that time, scores of journalists had descended on Midland, a West Texas oil city, and the rescue was carried out on live television before a massive audience.

After her rescue, McClure was hospitalized for more than a month and lost a toe to gangrene. She and her family were flooded with gifts and cards from well-wishers, and received a visit from Vice President George H.W. Bush and a phone call from President Ronald Reagan. Once out of the hospital, McClure went on to lead a normal life, spent largely out of the public spotlight. She graduated from high school in 2004, married two years later and became a mother. In 2011, at age 25, she gained access to a trust fund—reportedly worth at least $800,000—that was established following her rescue and made up of donations from people around the world.

Life proved more challenging for others involved in the Baby Jessica saga. McClure’s parents divorced several years after her accident, rescue workers in Midland feuded over a potential Hollywood movie deal and in 1995, a paramedic who played a key role in helping to save McClure died by suicide, possibly as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Born in Estonia in 1893, Rosenberg studied architecture at the University of Moscow. After receiving his degree, he stayed in Russia through the early days of the Russian Revolution and may have even flirted with communism briefly. In 1919, he immigrated to Munich, and met up with Dietrich Eckart, the poet-turned-editor of the Voelkischer Beobachter, the propagandistic newspaper of the Nazi Party. Through Eckart, Rosenberg met Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess and joined the newly formed Nazi Party. Hitler replaced Eckart with Rosenberg as editor of the paper, so impressed was Hitler with the “intellectual” architect.

Rosenberg immediately began using the news organ to disseminate his racist philosophy, now also the official Nazi philosophy, which was cobbled together from the writings of two men extremely influential on Germany’s growing anti-Semitism, racism, and grandiose self-perception: Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Englishman, and Count Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, a French diplomat, both of whom believed that the Aryan Germans were destined to be the masters of Europe.

When the 1923 Munich Beer Hall Putsch collapsed, and Hitler was thrown in jail, he turned the reins of the party over to Rosenberg, whom Hitler believed would prove feckless as a leader and thus no ultimate threat to his own authority. And there was nothing to fear-for the Nazi Party would be banned and dismissed as a laughingstock until Hitler took control again upon his release.

Rosenberg’s literary output continued as the Nazis fought for legitimacy and power. The Future Direction of a German Foreign Policy argued for the invasion and occupation of Poland and the Soviet Union. The Myth of the 20th Century laid out the convoluted notions of Nordic racial superiority once again, also describing in no uncertain terms who the enemies of a German-Nazi Europe were: “Russian Tartars” (that is, Slavs), and Semites, which included not merely Jews but all the Latin ethnic groups—as well as Christianity, especially the Roman Catholic Church. This “blueprint” for a “natural right” of conquest fueled Hitler’s already violent prejudices and megalomaniac character.

Rosenberg’s roles during the war included working, from his Office of Foreign Affairs, with Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling in the overthrow of Norway’s government. Rosenberg was also responsible for overseeing the transportation of stolen artworks from Vichy France to Germany.

At the Nuremberg trials, Rosenberg was found guilty of war crimes and ordered hanged.

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Ford’s Ranchero was the first “car-truck” sold in the United States, but it was not a new idea. Since the 1930s, Australian farmers had been driving what they called “utes”—short for “coupé utility”—all around the outback. Legend has it that a farmer’s wife from rural Victoria had written a letter to Ford Australia, asking the company to build a car that could carry her to church on Sundays and her husband’s pigs to market on Mondays. In response, Ford engineer Lewis Brandt designed a low-slung sedan-based vehicle that was a ritzy passenger car in the front, with wind-up windows and comfortable seats and a rough-and-tumble pickup in back. The ute was a huge hit; eventually, virtually every company that sold cars Down Under made its own version.

In the United States, however, ute-type vehicles were slower to catch on. Though the Ranchero was a steady seller, the first incarnation of the El Camino was not and Chevy discontinued it after just two years. In 1964, the company introduced a new version, this one built on the brawnier Chevelle platform. In 1968, the more powerful SS engine made the El Camino into one of the iconic muscle cars of the late 1960s and 1970s.

In 1987, Chevrolet dropped the El Camino from its lineup for good. Today, the car is a cult classic.

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Wearing a captain’s uniform, Voigt approached a troop of soldiers in Tegel, Germany, just outside Berlin and ordered the unit to follow him 20 miles to the town of Kopenik. After lunch, he put the men in position and stormed into the mayor’s office. Declaring that the mayor was under arrest, Voigt commanded the troops to take him into custody. He then demanded to see the cash box and confiscated the 4,000 marks inside. The mayor was put in a car, and Voigt ordered that he be delivered to the police in Berlin.

On the way to Berlin, Voigt managed to disappear with the money. Still, it took more than a few hours at the police station before everyone realized that it was all a hoax. Although the Kaiser thought the story was funny, the German army didn’t find it so amusing, and a massive campaign to find Voigt was instituted. Days later, Voigt was caught in Berlin. He received a four-year sentence for his caper, but the Kaiser himself pulled some strings to get him out in less than two.

Voigt wound up a folk hero for the rest of his days. Wearing the captain’s uniform, he posed for pictures for years.

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The Guatemala national team was set to face off against Costa Rica on a Wednesday night in Guatemala City. Approximately 60,000 fans, most dressed in blue and white, the country’s traditional colors, came to the stadium, which has a capacity of only 45,000. Apparently, counterfeiters had sold thousands of fake tickets to the event.

Although the stadium was already full to capacity about an hour before the match was scheduled to begin, fans continued to push their way into the venue through a narrow passage. As those in front of them had nowhere to go, people began to be crushed and suffocated. Fist fights that broke out in the crowd exacerbated the situation, which ended in a panicked stampede.

Guatemala’s President Alvara Arzu witnessed the chaos from a box seat and called off the match. However, it was too late for 83 people, including many children. The bodies of the victims, some with their clothes torn off, lined the grounds of the stadium afterward as scores of injured received medical treatment.

Pope John Paul II sent a message of condolence to the relatives of the victims. President Arzu declared three days of national mourning. “What does football matter now?” said Guatemala’s head coach, Horacio Cordero.

The Guatemala City stampede was not unique; there were at least four stampedes at soccer matches that killed more than 40 people in the 1980s and 1990s.

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After returning to Britain, Wilde married and had two children, for whom he wrote delightful fairy tales, which were published in 1888. Meanwhile, he wrote reviews and edited Women’s World. In 1890, his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, was published serially, appearing in book form the following year. He wrote his first play, The Duchess of Padua, in 1891 and wrote five more in the next four years. His plays, including The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), were successful and made him a popular and well-known writer.

In 1895, the Marquess of Queensberry denounced Wilde as a homosexual, accusing him of having an affair with the marquess’s son. Wilde sued for libel, but lost his case when evidence strongly supported the marquess’s observations. Unfortunately, homosexuality was classified as a crime in England at the time. Wilde was arrested, found guilty, and sentenced to two years of hard labor.

Wilde was released from prison in 1897 and fled to Paris, where his many loyal friends visited him. He started writing again, producing The Ballad of Reading Gaol, based on his experiences in prison. He died of acute meningitis in 1900.

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From the late 1950s to the mid 1960s, it was common for original cast recordings of successful Broadway musicals to find their way up near the top of the pop album charts. Hit shows like West Side Story, The Sound of Music and Funny Girl, among several others, all spun off million-selling albums during this era, but by the late 1960s, the pop album charts had been decisively taken over by rock. It was in this environment that composer Lloyd Webber and his lyricist partner Rice managed to achieve a massive success by precisely reversing the old formula.

Jesus Christ Superstar was the third musical written by Lloyd Webber and Rice, following on The Likes of Us, which was staged for the first time in 2005, and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, which saw only limited performances in various English churches between 1968 and 1970. Superstar grew out of Tim Rice’s longtime fascination with Judas Iscariot, whom he conceived not as a craven betrayer of Jesus, but rather as a dear friend struggling with the implications of Jesus’ growing celebrity. Although the musical would later find broad support among leaders of liberal Christian churches, it was nevertheless too controversial to gain the financial backing necessary for a stage production. Lloyd Webber and Rice therefore chose to package Superstar as an album first.

Working with a cast that included Murray Head—later of the pop hit “One Night In Bangkok” (1985)—in the role of Judas, and Yvonne Elliman—of the 1977 #1 hit “If I Can’t Have You”—as Mary Magdalene, Lloyd Webber and Rice recorded the Jesus Christ Superstar album in the summer of 1970 and released it in Britain and the United States the following fall.

Then as now, Lloyd Webber and Rice had their detractors in the critical establishment. Writing for The New York Times, critic Don Heckman questioned whether this new “rock opera” deserved praise either as rock or as an opera. “As rock, it leaves much to be desired,” he wrote. And in relation to 20th-century operas by the likes of Stravinsky and Gershwin, Heckman argued, “The comparison is pretty devastating.”

Nevertheless the Jesus Christ Superstar album went gold and spawned a Top 40 single in versions of “I Don’t Know How To Love Him” by both Yvonne Elliman and Helen Reddy, and it shot all the way to the top of the Billboard album charts in early 1971, paving the way for a smash Broadway opening later that year.

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The Million Man March was the brainchild of Louis Farrakahn, leader of the Nation of Islam, and was organized by the National African American Leadership Summit and a number of other groups. The march was largely a response to the politics of the time—with a Republican-controlled Congress and a conservative-leaning Democratic president, Bill Clinton, Washington was gripped by a desire to lower taxes and cut government spending on education, housing and social programs. Organizers also expressed a desire to change the public’s image of African American men in response to high-profile scandals like the O.J. Simpson trial and Mike Tyson’s rape conviction, arguing that Black men were often treated by the government and media as “sacrificial lambs” for the sins of all American men.

The event began with a Muslim call to prayer and a Christian invocation. Attendees took in speeches and performances by representatives from Africa and the Caribbean, a number of Christian ministers and other figures such as Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King III, Maya Angelou, Dr. Cornel West and many more in a program that lasted more than 12 hours. Speakers and attendees emphasized responsibility, with the crowd taking a pledge to support their families, refrain from abusive behavior toward women and children, and renounce violence except in self-defense, in addition to building up Black businesses and institutions in their communities.

Some critics took issue with this aspect of the march, arguing that it amounted to a performance of responsibility by Black men that was chiefly meant to impress the media and corporate America. The march’s focus on men also received criticism from feminists, including Angela Davis. During the march, the Rev. Jesse Jackson railed against the Republican-controlled House of Representatives for cutting funding to public schools in poor areas, while other speakers condemned racial inequities in law enforcement and the closing of inner-city hospitals.

The U.S. Park Police estimated that 400,000 people had attended, angering the Million Man March’s organizers. A later estimate put the number at 870,000 with a 20 percent margin of error, just high enough to leave open the possibility that a million men had attended. Like the attendance total, the march’s long-term impact is difficult to assess, but organizers point to the fact that over 1.5 million Black men registered to vote for the first time over the course of the next year as evidence of their success.

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A talented artist from a young age, Walt Disney drew cartoons for various publications and became interested in cel animation while working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. After his Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt in 1923, Walt moved to Los Angeles, where Roy was recovering from tuberculosis. While there, he finally sold a short film produced by Laugh-O-Gram, Alice’s Wonderland, and signed a contract to make six more such films. In order to produce the series, the brothers founded their company and persuaded both Virginia Davis, who played Alice, and their collaborator Ub Iwerks to join them in Hollywood.

After the success of the Alice Comedies and a series based on a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Disney began work on his most famous creation. With the 1928 release of Steamboat Willie, the world was introduced to Mickey Mouse. The character would go on to become one of, if not the most recognizable cartoons in history.

The popularity of the Mickey Mouse shorts convinced Disney his studio could produce a feature film, which he began to do in 1934. The project, which some dubbed “Disney’s Folly,” went 400 percent over budget and required over 300 animators, artists, and assistants, but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was a smash hit when it debuted just before Christmas 1937.

Since then, the Walt Disney Company has produced dozens of groundbreaking and acclaimed films. It has evolved into a holding company for all manner of media and entertainment properties, opening theme parks across the world beginning in 1955 and acquiring dozens of companies in the '90s and 2000s. Disney now owns and operates ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm.

What began with a handful of animators producing short children’s cartoons is today one of the most iconic companies in the world. Disney original cartoons and feature films constitute some of the most popular and enduring entries in the American canon.

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Born in Connecticut in 1800 and raised in Ohio, Brown came from a staunchly Calvinist and antislavery family. He spent much of his life failing at a variety of businesses—he declared bankruptcy at age 42 and had more than 20 lawsuits filed against him. In 1837, his life changed irrevocably when he attended an abolition meeting in Cleveland, during which he was so moved that he publicly announced his dedication to destroying the institution of slavery. As early as 1848 he was formulating a plan to incite an insurrection.

In the 1850s, Brown traveled to Kansas with five of his sons to fight against the proslavery forces in the contest over that territory. On May 21, 1856, proslavery men raided the abolitionist town of Lawrence, and Brown personally sought revenge. On May 25, Brown and his sons attacked three cabins along Pottawatomie Creek. They killed five men with broad swords and triggered a summer of guerrilla warfare in the troubled territory. One of Brown’s sons was killed in the fighting.

By 1857, Brown returned to the East and began raising money to carry out his vision of a mass uprising of enslaved people. He secured the backing of six prominent abolitionists, known as the “Secret Six,” and assembled an invasion force. His “army” grew to include 22 men, including five Black men and three of Brown’s sons. The group rented a Maryland farm near Harpers Ferry and prepared for the assault.

On the night of October 16, 1859, Brown and his band overran the arsenal. Some of his men rounded up a handful of hostages, including a few enslaved people. Word of the raid spread, and by morning Brown and his men were surrounded. A company of U.S. marines arrived on October 17, led by Colonel Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant J. E. B. Stuart. On the morning of October 19, the soldiers overran Brown and his followers. Ten of his men were killed, including two of his sons.

The wounded Brown was tried by the state of Virginia for treason and murder, and he was found guilty on November 2. The 59-year-old abolitionist went to the gallows on December 2, 1859. Before his execution, he handed his guard a slip of paper that read, “I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.” It was a prophetic statement. Although the raid failed, it inflamed sectional tensions and raised the stakes for the 1860 presidential election. Brown’s raid helped make any further accommodation between North and South nearly impossible and thus became an important impetus of the Civil War.

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Under the terms of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, two new territories—Kansas and Nebraska—would be allowed into the Union and each territory’s citizens would be given the power to determine whether slavery would be allowed within the territory’s borders. It was believed that the act would set a precedent for determining the legality of slavery in other new territories. Controversy over the act influenced political races across the country that fall. Abolitionists, like Lincoln, hoped to convince lawmakers in the new territories to reject slavery.

Lincoln, who was practicing law at the time, campaigned on behalf of abolitionist Republicans in Illinois and attacked the Kansas-Nebraska Act. He denounced members of the Democratic Party for backing a law that “assumes there can be moral right in the enslaving of one man by another.” He believed that the law went against the founding American principle that “all men are created equal.” Lincoln was an abolitionist at heart, but he realized that the outlawing of slavery in states where it already existed might lead to civil war. Instead, he advocated outlawing the spread of slavery to new states. He hoped this plan would preserve the Union and slowly eliminate slavery by confining it to the South, where, he believed, “it would surely die a slow death.”

Lincoln and his fellow abolitionists were dismayed when Kansans voted a pro-slavery candidate into Congress in November. As Lincoln’s political career picked up momentum over the next several years, he continually referred to the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the seeming inevitability that Kansas should become a slave state as “a violence…it was conceived in violence, passed in violence, is maintained in violence, and is being executed in violence.”

Lincoln continued to actively campaign against slavery in Kansas and helped to raise money to support anti-slavery candidates in that state. Meanwhile he continued his law practice and ran for the U.S. Senate in 1859. Although he lost to Democrat Stephen Douglas, Lincoln began to make a name for himself in national politics and earned increasing support from the North and abolitionists across the nation. It was this constituency that helped him win the presidency in 1860.

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