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The treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo was a treaty between the U.S and Mexico ending the Mexican-American war. The U.S gained Mexican land in North America, but they had to pay Mexico 15 million dollars for it. This contributed to sectionalism in that it introduced lots of new states into the U.S, sparking debates on whether these new states would become free or slave states.

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The Free Soil party was a party whose singular focus was the opposition of slavery in new western territories. The party formed almost immediately as a reaction to the Mexican Cession, and it contributed to sectionalism by further deepening the political divide between northerners and southerners; especially over the issue of slavery.

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Zachary Taylor, elected in 1848, was a strong nationalist and tried above all else to keep the country together amidst worsening tensions between the North and the South. However, sectionalism only worsened under him with his decision to allow California and New Mexico to draft their own constitutions as they entered the union. This infuriated Southerners, as neither were likely to enter as slave states, upsetting the balance between free and slave.

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Compromise which sought to resolve issues over slavery in the newly acquired western territories from the Mexican American War by banning the slave trade in Washington D.C and letting the people of new western states decide on whether they wanted to allow slavery. It also introduced a harsher fugitive slave act. This helped postpone the Civil War by some time, but ultimately could not indefinitely suspend the rise of sectionalism.

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The Fugitive Slave Act was passed as part of the Compromise of 1850. It was a law that required all escaped slaves to be returned to their masters, and it required Northerners to comply with the law and turn in any escaped slave they spotted despite the fact that they would be traveling through free states. This contributed to sectionalism because it angered many Northerners, as they did not want to be responsible for enforcing slavery. It also led to slavers capturing free Black Northerners and enslaving them by lying about their status as slaves.

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Uncle Tom's Cabin was a novel written by Harriet Beecher Stowe which sought to display the harsh realities of slavery. It was the second best-selling novel of the 1800s behind the bible, and it was a landmark in the anti-slavery movement. This contributed to sectionalism because it caused a sharp rise in abolitionism, which meant more people were opposed to South and what they were doing.

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Franklin Pierce was elected in 1853 and served until 1857. He was a Democrat who strongly supported slavery and the South, and he passed the Kansas-Nebraska act as well as strongly supporting the Fugitive Slave Act. He led to sectionalism because the acts he passed and the institutions he supported alienated many abolitionists form the North.

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The Kansas-Nebraska act was an act that created the states of Kansas and Nebraska. The act determined that Kansas and Nebraska would decide to allow slavery based on "popular sovereignty" or the votes of the people rather than the Missouri Compromise. this effectively nullified the Missouri Compromise and angered many Northerners, leading to the expansion of sectionalism.

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The Republican Party was formed from the remnants of the collapsing Whig Party, and Northern Abolitionists. It was created shortly after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, and in response to the Democrat's advancing of slavery. The Republican Party, after a weaker showing in the Election of 1856, swept to victory in 1860 with Abraham Lincoln at the helm. Lincoln's victory led directly to the start of Civil War, when Southern states seceded because of his policies.

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The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 gave each of the new territories the right to choose for themselves if they would allow slavery or not. Kansas was a hotbed of controversy, and over the next five years, a miniature civil war embroiled Kansas in guerilla warfare between abolitionists from the North and pro-slave fighters from Missouri. Elections held to determine if slavery would be allowed were often incredibly fraudulent, with the resulted invalidated. Many attacks were led by abolitionist John Brown. Kansas represented a sort of mini American Civil War, as the fighting that happened there would be repeated, but on a much larger scale, a decade later.

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Charles Sumner was an abolitionist Republican from Massachusetts, and while delivering a speech against slavery, was attacked by representative Preston Brooks, a pro-slavery Democrat from South Carolina. The beating nearly killed Sumner, and historians regard this as the point at which reasonable discourse over slavery completely broke down, and the country started its descent farther into turmoil.

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James Buchanan was a Democrat who supported slavery. His victory was the last by the Democrats until 1884, as the new Republican party became the dominant one after the Civil War. Buchanan supported the idea that states should choose for themselves if they would allow slavery or not, which may have sounded good in theory, but in actuality, it just created conflicts like what was seen in Kansas. The furthering of this policy did nothing but contribute to the growing tensions that would lead to the Civil War.

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This was a Supreme Court case which ruled that any person whose ancestors were imported as slaves, could not be a legal US citizen. Dred Scott, a Missouri slave living in the free state of Illinois, sued for his freedom, saying that because he lived in a free state, he was therefore not a slave. The ruling made the Missouri Compromise almost non-existent, and it furthered the anger that many abolitionist Northerners had towards slaveholders.

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The Lecompton Constitution was one of four constitutions drafted for the state of Kansas, and it was very pro-slavery. The city, Lecompton, which it was named for, was a slaveholders' stronghold in the state. The Constitution ultimately did not pass, as many felt it was too divisive and too pro-slavery. The multiple different constitutions drafted displayed the sheer divide in many states between pro- and anti- slavery.

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John Brown was a white abolitionist who, with some fellow militia members, stormed a US military supply at Harper's Ferry in Virginia in order to gather guns to arm slaves to rebel. It was ultimately unsuccessful, and Brown and his co-conspirators were put in prison, and Brown was hung. This led to the civil war because Brown was seen as a martyr by some abolitionists, and the South became even more angry at the North.

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When Abraham Lincoln, a senator from Illinois was elected in 1860, many Southerners were fearful, as Lincoln had known anti-slavery bias. Although he repeatedly said that he would not abolish slavery to appease the Southern voter, he received very little votes from that region, and once elected, the development of the Civil War accelerated rapidly.

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The Crittenden Compromise was an effort by a Kentucky Senator to permanently write slavery into the United States Constitution. It failed before it could become approved, but it furthered heightened tensions between pro-slavery Southerners and anti-slavery Northerners.

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South Carolina, 5 days before Christmas in 1860, became the first state to secede from the Union. As a slave-holding state, South Carolina was worried due to Lincoln's victory in the Election of 1860, due to his anti-slavery views. With their secession, South Carolina basically started the Confederacy, which would become the Union's enemy in the Civil War.