The Cultural Civil War: St. Louis and the Failures of Manifest Destiny

Adam Arenson, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

In the mid-nineteenth century, the conflict to define the promises of Manifest Destiny and the reach of slavery politics ignited a cultural civil war between advocates of the North, South and West, a conflict decades in coming and generations more in consequence. Throughout, St. Louis uniquely mirrored the nation’s regional, political, and ethnic diversity, and its leaders tried, briefly succeeded, but ultimately failed to steer the course of the nation toward those solutions advocated by the West. This “Gateway to the West,” situated on the frontier of slavery, reveals the forgotten western agenda, essential to understanding the Civil War era beyond the clash of North and South.