Abstract
Abstract:
We commonly acknowledge that the extension of slavery into the West was a primary cause of the sectional crisis. Yet we tend to treat these two mid-nineteenth- century narratives as geographically distinct: a battle over slavery engulfs the East while mineral rushes and migration transform the West. Here the creation of the Colorado Territory is framed within both these developments as well as in the shifting conception of American geography in the 1850s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
