James Buchanon was a hands-off president during the sectional crisis. In his final address to Congress, he explains his thoughts on secession and the ability of the president to stop it.

The Election of 1860 placed the country in danger. Who won? Who lost? And did the South secede?

How did the South take the news of Lincoln's nomination? Did they welcome it with open arms or see it as a sign of the end times?

How did William Seward, the expected nominee, lose the bid to become the President in 1860, and who was this upstart, Lincoln?

The Democratic Party split. Now there are two separate groups, and each wants to nominate a president. And what is the Cincinatti Platform and how does it pertain to the Democrats?

Would you hold a nomination convention if your party was splintering? The Democrats did in 1860 and it did not go well.

It's an election year, but is everyone happy with the candidates? And what plans are forming in South Carolina that could ruin everything?

John Brown. Depending on where you are born, he's either a zealot or a terrorist. He is a complicated man, but one that created the spark that started the war.

The Kansas Nebraska Act destroyed the Missouri Compromise, opening the territories to slavery. But the fighting that happened in Kansas should have been a warning to the fighting that would happen in 1861.

SOURCES:

Nicole Etcheson. Bleeding Kansas Contested Liberty in the Civil War Era. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. 2004.

How does the Mexican-American War, Dred Scott and the Lincoln Douglas debates figure into the cause of the Civil War?