In this episode we continue the story of the origins of the Civil War. We begin with the decade of the 1850s and concentrate on the issues that created the conditions for war. Rather than stop the expansion of slavery, it continued. While Southern states were pleased, opinion makers in the North were not. As the decade progressed, attitudes hardened, making compromise impossible to achieve. In our next episode we will concentrate on the secession of the southern states and the opening months of the Lincoln administration.