It is easy to mark the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 as a seed that planted the Civil War and the significance of the Republican Party. However, if the Act was the seed, it got plenty of nourishment from the Constitution, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Treaty of Hidalgo in 1848, and the Compromise of 1850(1)(2)(3). The Constitution was specific in keeping the word “slavery” out, but it got protection in the form of the three-fifth compromise granted by the Founding Fathers. As the country began its Manifest Destiny beyond the Louisiana Purchase, it was clear that boundaries needed to be formed to determine free state or slave state.