The first volume of The Road to Disunion starts with Thomas Jefferson and his views on slavery and ends with the passage in 1854 of the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which effectively extended slavery to the Western Plains. While the book focuses on the major political events of the period 1820 to 1854, it is also a broad study of Southern life and culture. It shows that there was no monolithic South, with one set of opinions and behaviour; rather each area had its own political views and internal conflicts.