This documentary explores the turbulent forty years leading up to the Civil War; it is the first documentary ever produced on Henry Clay of Kentucky, the most dominant public figure in the formulation of compromises in 1820, 1833, and 1850 that narrowly avoided disunion and civil war. The production examines the impact of slavery on the expansion of the Nation westward and how the conflict between North and South, free states and slave states, was, in the end, irrepressible.