With the pressure following the passage of the Kansas Nebraska Act, many northerners opposed slavery and were concerned with the possibility of its expansion. In 1856, these northerners formed a new political party called the Republican Party. Once Abraham Lincoln was nominated as the Republican candidate, the South began making plans to secede from the union if Lincoln was elected as President of the United States. In the “South Carolina Declaration of Causes of Secession”, delegates state, “A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery.”15 Thus, proving the North backed the Republican platform while the South followed through with its plan to succeed from the Union. Although many Northerners were opposed to the expansion of slavery and or slavery itself, many still believed in the idea of white supremacy.