In the many decades between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such divisions became increasingly irreconcilable and contentious. Events in the 1850s culminated with the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president on November 6, 1860.
On May 4, 1886, a labor protest rally near Chicago's Haymarket Square turned into a riot after someone threw a bomb at police. At least eight people died as a result of the violence that day. Despite a lack of evidence against them, eight radical labor activists were convicted in connection with the bombing.
