Americans were sure that God was on their side. They sought to remake their world according to a new covenant. And in this new covenant, borders seemed wrong. There was land waiting for them in the West, and all they had to do was clear the way. Expansion would be a great national project, a realization of American manifest destiny. But manifest destiny resulted in a continental empire, increasingly divided over the national crime of slavery. God's chosen people entered a stolen promised land and took one more step toward American Armageddon.