At mid-century the United States had been in crisis, its very survival, many observers believed, under threat. After the Compromise measures of 1850 had been agreed and put into operation, there was a huge collective sigh of relief: the crisis, most now believed, had been resolved. They were wrong. The nation was still in crisis. The difference was that this time no one knew. This did not make the crisis any the less severe; on the contrary it made it still more dangerous.

A crisis may be defined as a situation that has reached an extremely difficult or dangerous point. In the aftermath of the Compromise of 1850, despite the relief felt by most Americans, the crisis had not in fact been averted. Those who perceived the problem thought they had a solution; those who rejected the solution believed the problem could be ignored. Both groups were mistaken.

The problem was the organisation of the nation’s territory. Since the conclusion of the Mexican War, the United States had been a Pacii c power. California in 1850 had been admitted into the Union. Despite southern resentment at the admission of another free state (and at the way in which it had been achieved), California, with her small population and infant economy, would henceforth play only a minor part in the struggle between North and South. But her entry into the Union created an extraordinary anomaly. The nation now consisted of states in the East and what would now be termed the Midwest, together with a state on the Pacific (with more projected there). But this left a huge gap, covering many thousands of square miles, between the two. This was the northern part of the Louisiana Purchase, still unorganised and generally referred to as the Nebraska territory. The crisis derived from the impossibility of organising this territory without creating a catastrophic conl ict between North and South.