The Civil War was one of the darkest in American history. Many issues led to the Civil War, but none was more contentious than the issue of slavery. Clashes between slavery and slavery opponents turned violent in Kansas. Slavery advocates wanted the new territories to decide for themselves or not to allow slavery. Opponents thought that slavery was and wanted it abolished completely. After the rebellion by abolishonist John Brown, in which the federal arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia was , slavery advocates that new president Abraham Lincoln would take to abolish slavery, and ruin the southern . As a result, eleven states from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Two days after the first shots of the war were fired at Fort Sumter, Lincoln war to the nation.