From the 1660s, when slavery in the American colonies was legalized, through the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the Constitution's ratification in 1788, Congress's ban on slave imports in 1808, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, the Dred Scott case in 1857, the Lincoln-Douglas debates in 1858, Lincoln's election as president in 1860, the beginning of the Civil War and Douglas's death in 1861, and the Emancipation Proclamation in 1862, the nation moved toward 1865, when the 13th Amendment abolished slavery, the Civil War ended, and Lincoln was assassinated.