Between 1832 and 1848, the United States grows into a continental power through a handful of documents, and educators from American universities walk through each one. Andrew Jackson's South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification and his Proclamation Regarding Nullification set the stage, pitting federal authority against a state's claim to override a tariff law it disliked. The Constitution of the American Anti-Slavery Society, adopted in Philadelphia in 1833, borrows the Declaration of Independence's language of equality to call slavery unjust. The Webster-Ashburton Treaty of 1842 fixes the Maine-Canada border, and the Oregon Treaty of 1846 extends the 49th parallel to Puget Sound, settling the Pacific Northwest question. The film closes with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, which ends the Mexican War, hands the United States a huge stretch of territory including much of Texas, and sets a $15 million payment for the California Territory. Each document gets read against the political argument it settled or started.