Parties and the Sectional Conflict.

It is easy to oversimplify the coming of the Civil War as a series of steadily intensifying collisions over slavery issues. Focusing solely on the episodes of confrontation loses sight of the fact that American politics provided a mechanism for resolving conflicts—including bitter conflicts over slavery issues—for many years. The crisis of the 1850s was more explosive not because the country faced more-intractable issues than it had before but because the Whig- Democratic party system collapsed early in the decade. Disagreements over slavery were only a part of the reason for this development. The social and economic transformation of the country had by the 1850s eroded the underpinnings of the Whig-Democratic rivalry in a way that left American politics ready to be reorganized along sectional lines.

Fading National Issues.

The acquiescence in the...