This week on The Past, The Promise, The Presidency: Presidential Crises, we took a look at two crises from the 1850s: the violent struggle between pro and anti-slavery factions over the political fortunes of future states, known as "Bleeding Kansas," and the less well-known fight between federal authorities, president James Buchanan in particular, and Mormon leaders out of Utah.

 To put the coming Civil War into context and better understand these intertwined crises of federal expansion in the 1850s, we spoke with professor Sarah Barringer-Gordon--Sally, to her friends--the Arlin M. Adams Professor of Constitutional Law and Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Barringer-Gordon is one of the nation's experts on questions of constitutional religious freedoms. We then turned to professor Kellie Carter Jackson, who teaches in the department of Africana studies at Wellesley college. Dr. Carter Jackson’s work focuses on Black abolitionists and the role of violence in the ongoing battle for slavery’s abolition.