Summarize and discuss the ways that formal policies of government have influenced the direction of historical and social development in the United States.

America became a free independent nation. With the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, the former mother country, England, recognized that its children, the colonies, were now on their own. A constitutional republic was birthed, and thus the challenges began. Slavery, the “Peculiar Institution,” was a monumental issue facing the country. Would it die or would it survive and possibly take a nation divided with it? This sectionalism followed Americans up into the Civil War. Dissect this crisis by addressing parts I and II below.