Covers the period 1800 through the start of the Civil War, during which slavery saw an enormous expansion and entered its final decades. As the nation expanded west, the question of slavery became the overriding political issue of the time. These years saw an increasingly militant abolitionist movement and a widening rift between the North -- which had largely outlawed slavery but continued to reap the vast economic benefits of the system -- and the South, now home to millions of enslaved black men, women and children. .