War did not seem inevitable: most Americans had lived with sectional conflict and inflammatory political talk for most of their lives.

- but his discussion of growing sectional conflict bothered some, including his uncle Robert.

However, his faith in the resiliency and effectiveness of the national government to resolve sectional conflicts waned as the 1850s drew to a close.

Long-standing sectional conflicts erupted into rebellion by the peoples of the north in 1966.

The idea of nullification increasingly became associated with matters pertaining to the sectional conflict and slavery.

For Webster needed an idealistic society to support his realistic nationalism, a society in which class and sectional conflict did not exist.

It was invoked again as sectional conflicts increased in the years before the American Civil War.

The geographical division of the country into free and slave states ensured that the crises would take the form of sectional conflict.

They had to ensure that the sectional conflict would remain at the center of the political debate.

The stability of the two-party system kept the union together, but would collapse in the 1850s, thus reinforcing, rather than suppressing, sectional conflict.