Professor David Blight continues his America at 250: A History lecture series at Yale by tracing the political crisis of the 1850s, beginning with the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision. He follows the chain of events that pushed the nation toward civil war, examining how legal rulings, party realignment, and sectional disputes over slavery combined to erode the possibility of compromise. Recorded in Yale's Sprague Hall, the lecture is part of the DeVane Lecture series America at 250: A History, a one time course examining United States history from 1776 to the present taught by three Yale professors. The lecture builds directly on the prior class's discussion of the Mexican War and its aftermath, showing how territorial expansion fed directly into the sectional crisis.