Yale historian David Blight, in this session of the 2024 DeVane Lecture Series "Can It Happen Here Again? Yale, Slavery, and Legacies," traces the constitutional and political crisis of the 1850s. He walks through the Dred Scott decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Black Americans could claim no rights under the Constitution, and the violent territorial conflict known as Bleeding Kansas, where pro- and anti-slavery settlers fought over whether the territory would enter the Union free or slave. Blight connects these episodes to the collapse of the political system that had managed sectional compromise for decades, showing how they pushed the country toward secession and civil war. The lecture treats slavery as a structural force shaping American law and institutions rather than a side issue, and situates the 1850s as one of the pivot points where the nation's democratic experiment nearly failed.