What the 1850s can Teach Us about Modern American Politics

Beware Moderate Compromises. Historians list the moderate efforts to end the conflicts of the 1850 as some of the main causes of the Civil War. Every such effort, the Compromise of 1850, the Fugitive Slave Act, and the Kansas-Nebraska Act made things worse.

Radicalism intensifies. The extremists of the 1850s; the Radical Abolitionists and the Southern Fire Eaters, became bolder, increasingly rabid, and more aggressive as the decade went on.