Or the USA would cease to exist. The fact that this issue needed to be settled by a brutal war puts into perspective just how difficult of a problem this was t

Or the USA would cease to exist. The fact that this issue needed to be settled by a brutal war puts into perspective just how difficult of a problem this was to solve. If this issue was tackled earlier, it's very possible that the country would have split into two factions, which would then compete with one another during westward expansion, triggering a conflict that would turn out to be much more devastating.