Disunion within the United States was seemingly inevitable during the Antebellum period. Frustration seeded in the north and the south regarding differentiations of perspective on slave trade fueled the century long dispute that eventually led to the Civil War. This period, beginning in the early 1820s and spanning throughout the 1850s, is marked with key events that spun the US into immense turmoil and perturbance concerning the subject of slavery and state slave laws. Two main events, known as the Kansas - Nebraska Act, and the decision in the Dred Scott case, greatly effected the uproar that led to the eventual disjunction of the United States.

The Kansas - Nebraska Act was proposed by Stephen Douglas in 1854. A senator of Illinois, he suggested that the United States simply keep a pattern of one slave state per one non-slave state. His proposition allowed for each state to vote on...