in the 1840s and 1850s, people in the northern states and people in the southern states did not agree whether slavery was right or wrong in the territories—parts of the united states that were not yet states. people in the government tried to make deals to stop a war. some deals were the compromise of 1850 and the kansas-nebraska act, but they did not really work to keep the union together. people in the south were angry at books like "uncle tom’s cabin" that said that slavery was wrong. people in the north did not like a supreme court decision called dred scott that kept scott a slave. people from the south and people from the north started killing each other in kansas over slavery. this was called "bleeding kansas". one of the people from bleeding kansas, john brown, took over a town in virginia in 1859 to make a point about slavery being wrong and to try to get slaves to fight their owners.