<P> The Republican Party wanted to achieve the gradual extinction of slavery by market forces, because its members believed that free labor was superior to slave labor . Southern leaders said the Republican policy of blocking the expansion of slavery into the West made them second - class citizens, and challenged their autonomy . With the 1860 presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln, seven Deep South states whose economy was based on cotton and slavery decided to secede and form a new nation . The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina . When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, four more slave states seceded . </P> <P> Western explorer John C. Frémont ran as the first Republican nominee for president in 1856, using the political slogan: "Free soil, free silver, free men, Frémont and victory!" Although he lost, the party showed a strong base . It dominated in Yankee areas of New England, New York and the northern Midwest, and had a strong presence in the rest of the North . It had almost no support in the South, where it was roundly denounced in 1856--60 as a divisive force that threatened civil war . </P> <P> Without using the term "containment", the new Party in the mid-1850s proposed a system of containing slavery, once it gained control of the national government . Historian James Oakes explains the strategy: </P> <P> The federal government would surround the south with free states, free territories, and free waters, building what they called a "cordon of freedom" around slavery, hemming it in until the system's own internal weaknesses forced the slave states one by one to abandon slavery . </P>

Why were members of the women’s rights movement often sympathetic to the cause of abolition