Connecting the Dots

Yes, that was a big boost toward the Civil War, when the South started demanding that people who opposed slavery participate in it. Most affected states split over the issue: some bigots started rounding up free blacks and selling them South, while the abolitionists risked their own safety to aid escaped slaves on their now-longer flight to freedom in Canada.

America has an atrocious history of race relations, and isn't going to stop running into problems over that until people outgrow the beliefs that caused it in the first place. Slooooooow progress.

That one was actually new to me too; I knew there was a lot of hostility against Chinese people for a while, but not that they were more or less banned. Eventually it wore off when people's ire switched to other ethnicities.