After the War of 1812 a new spirit of nationalism and expansion swept the nation. Party and sectional divisions fell by the wayside during the “era of good feelings” with a president who was determined to heal old wounds, but this spirit of unity did not last. Sectional tensions reappeared during the Missouri debates, which brought the issue of slavery and its expansion to the forefront. The immediate question, of which section would control the Senate, found resolution through the Missouri Compromise, but the underlying problem proved more difficult to settle. The Missouri debates revealed that some of the nation saw the addition of slave states as a threat to the Union as southern politicians (and many of their northern counterparts) had come to equate the expansion of slavery with the expansion of southern political power. Divisions within the Republican Party led to the appearance of a new two-party system, which temporarily seemed to overshadow sectional concerns. With the election of Andrew Jackson to the presidency in 1828, the nation again seemed concerned more with unity than division. How long this would last was another question.