54-40 or Fight

The name Fifty-Four Forty or Fight comes from the dispute over the Oregon boundary in the 1840s: 54° 40' north was the line the most warlike Americans wanted against British Canada. The slogan itself is from about January 1846, not from James Polk's campaign of 1844, as it is often said.

The block is much younger than the slogan. The first print Brackman has found is from about 1910 and calls it Grandma's Star, and Ruth Finley gave it the historical name in her book Old Patchwork Quilts (1929) without explaining it. It was popular around 1890–1920, often in grey, black and navy prints. A simpler spiky star without the checkerboard is in some blocks of 1843 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The block is a nine patch of five four patches and four patches with a spiky triangle between two narrow ones, as the unit in Tall geese. The spikes are cut with a template or a special ruler, the four patches from strips.

Brackman shows it with the blocks alternately dark and light, or coloured from the middle like a medallion, so the stars run into each other. It is a spikier relative of Sawtooth Star.