Horizons

Focusing on westward expansion, this chapter studies antebellum warnings that frontier conflicts would cause civil war. It shows how diverging material cultures divided northerners and southerners in the West, the region that Americans associated with the future. Southern settlers wielded bowie knives to threaten aggressive filibusters and manly conquests for slavery. Northern emigrants concealed arms in crates to project how a civilized culture and prosperous economy would preserve the territories for freedom. These material cultures clashed at the Battle of Black Jack when John Brown captured Henry Clay Pate and stole his bowie knife. Black Jack was the first battle between northerners and southerners over slavery.