58 Introduction to Primary Sources for Chapters 11-15

The primary sources for these chapters chart the effects of westward expansion and the expansion of the domestic slave trade.  Slavery had caused political tension and conflict in the past, but during the Antebellum period political, economic, and social divisions became both sectional and irreconcilable. The fault lines that previously existed became exacerbated by westward expansion leading the bloodiest of America’s wars, the Civil War.