How this works

You'll move through 14 stops in chronological order. At each stop, you'll read what happened, examine an actual primary source (something written or said at the time), and answer a short question about why it mattered.

Three meters

As you move through history, three meters will rise, tracking the widening divide between North and South:

• Economic Divergence: how differently the Northern and Southern economies were developing.
• Political Conflict: how strained compromise in Congress and the courts had become.
• Attitudes on Slavery: how far apart Northern and Southern beliefs about slavery itself had grown.

These meters move based on what actually happened historically, not on your answers. Your answers instead build your Historian Score, a check on how well you understand why each event mattered.

A note on the ending

This isn't a game you can win or lose by making different choices; it's real history, and it ends the way it really ended: with the firing on Fort Sumter. Your job is to understand how the nation got there.