After three decades of attempts at compromise, the decade of the 1850's saw an increasing tendency towrd violence as the only way to solve the nagging questions that plagued America. 

     At the forefront of the controversy was the issue of human slavery, but other discrepancies existed as well; how would the country balance the different economic and social interests of its two distinctly different regions, and how would the balance of power between states and the federal government be settled once and for all.

     When all was said and done, those questions would be answered by the great internal conflict in United States History, the American Civil War.