The “sectional conflict” over slavery had become clear between the signing of the colonies’ Declaration of Independence and the ratification of the US Constitution 13 years later. A majority of Northern states had ended slavery either through legislation or court decisions, and the Southern states seemed unlikely to do so, as they’d already relied more heavily on slave labor during the colonial era, especially in large-scale cash crop agriculture such as tobacco. The divide was sharp enough for southern delegates at the Constitutional convention to insist that Congress should be forbidden to limit the overseas slave trade until 1808. The dispute over whether slaves should be counted as persons for legislative representation was also a near deal-breaker, resulting in the notorious “3/5” compromise. But with slave owners such as Washington expressing discomfort with the contradiction of upholding slavery in a nation of liberty, no direct reference to slavery was included in the Constitution itself, and despite the economic power of slave holders some form of gradual emancipation seemed possible.

That arguably changed once Eli Whitney developed a cotton-processing engine (or cotton gin) patented in 1794. There has been a limited number of cotton growers in the South, already exploiting slave labor, but the ‘gin’ made the separation of cotton seeds from fiber much faster, increasing the amount of cotton that could be harvested in a day by over 10x. Cotton was a major global trade item, and the British were especially large buyers of Southern cotton, especially as the textile mills expanded. As cotton plantations spread, slavery became much more entrenched, and the abolitionist movement became more insistent on opposing the spread of slavery.

The US withdrew from the global slave trade in 1807, but this simply generated a robust internal market rather than leading to a decline in slavery. By 1819 it was clear that slavery was the issue dividing the nation, with the Jeffersonians dividing regionally over the question of whether Congress had a right to place any territorial limit on slavery’s expansion. Henry Clay’s compromise of 1820 broke the deadlock, but did so by acknowledging the Mason-Dixon Line as a future boundary between slave and free states, a peace neither faction found fully satisfactory.

Tensions continued to flare regularly over the issue, as slavery’s economic importance to the South continued to grow, and as the abolitionist movement in the North expanded its political campaigns. In 1835, Southerners in Congress passed the first “gag rule” tabling any petition related to slavery entirely and effectively forbidding debate on the matter following what was in effect a highly successful letter-writing campaign by abolitionists which had garnered the support of Massachusetts rep (and former president) John Quincy Adams. The gag rule was maintained until 1844, when the Texas Crisis again exacerbated the growing rift. British dependence on US cotton continued to provide the main material incentive behind the plantation economy though the slaves themselves became an ever larger source of wealth as the slave trade within the US expanded as slavery spread west and soon enough broke over the 1820 compromises barrier.

But I’m guessing from your username that you’re likely interested in the question of how people were predicting conflict over slavery not out of a general interest in antebellum American politics, but out of a specific religious curiosity sparked by the December 25, 1832 document in which LDS founder Joseph Smith predicted a rebellion began by South Carolina.

The history of this prediction is fairly interesting due to its specific historical timing: throughout 1832, Congress had been debating a trade tariff. Tariffs were at that point the federal governments main revenue source, but they were harder on Southern planters who relied far more heavily on imports. On December 22nd, South Carolina’s leaders, egged on by Vice President Calhoun, claimed the right to “nullify” the federal tariff within their own state. President Andrew Jackson immediately responded by suggesting that to do so would be an act of war and he would respond accordingly, in part to discourage any other southern states (similarly at a disadvantage with the tariff) from considering the same course. For several months, the standoff was intense but by March it had all blown over and war once again seemed a distant possibility.

However, in December, the immediate outbreak of civil war, prompted by South Carolina’s rebellion, and followed by an appeal by the Southern states resisting the tariff to their main trade partner (Britain) and other European powers who wanted in on the American market (Spain having just recently lost Mexico etc) seemed like a very reasonable possibility. When everything blew over, Joseph Smith’s prediction seemed like an apocalyptic fantasy. Except that then, 28 years later, it was South Carolina that led the Southern states in expanding Calhoun’s nullification doctrine into formal secession, shots fired, and a long bloody war in which the South did appeal to the UK (though having ended their own slave trade in 1833, and developed new cotton sources in Egypt and India, Britain wasn’t particularly eager to get involved.

So Joseph Smith’s 1832 prediction is a sort of religious Rorschach test— easy to explain either as worst-case extrapolation from newspaper headlines, or as a prediction proved “true” to some degree by events much further down the road.

Anyhow, I hope you’ve found this answer interesting and perhaps helpful.

Warm regards, Your friendly neighborhood history ghost