The significance of the trans-appalachian frontier in Atlantic history

American Historical Review

Volumn 113, Issue 3, 2008, Pages 647-677

  Furstenberg, François ^a,b  

^a Department of History and McConnell ^*

^b UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL   (Canada)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 46849107760     PISSN: 00028762     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/ahr.113.3.647     Document Type: Article

References (316)

1. I am grateful to Heather Short for tipping me off to these matters, and for kindly mitigating the geological ignorance displayed in the above paragraph. See also the U.S. Geological Survey Appalachian Highlands Province website, http://wrgis.wr.usgs.gov/docs/parks/province/appalach.html (accessed April 14, 2008).
2. On the persistence of teleological accounts of national expansion among historians of the early U.S. republic, see Jack P. Greene, "Colonial History and National History: Reflections on a Continuing Problem," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 54 (April 2007): 235-250.
3. Important exceptions that focus on the West include Andrew R. L. Cayton, The Frontier Republic: Ideology and Politics in the Ohio Country, 1780-1825 (Kent, Ohio, 1986);
4. D. W. Meinig, The Shaping of America: A Geographical Perspective on 500 Years Of History, 4 vols. (New Haven, Conn., 1986), esp. vols. 1 and 2;
5. Andrew R. L. Cayton, " 'Separate Interests' and the Nation-State: The Washington Administration and the Origins of Regionalism in the Trans-Appalachian West," Journal of American History 79 (1992): 39-67;
6. Gregory H. Nobles, American Frontiers: Cultural Encounters and Continental Conquest (New York, 1997);
7. Eric Hinderaker, Elusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800 (New York, 1997);
8. Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991);
9. James E. Lewis, The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood: The United States and the Collapse of the Spanish Empire, 1783-1829 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1998);
10. Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 2001);
11. Stephen Aron, American Confluence: The Missouri Frontier from Borderland to Border State (Bloom-ington, Ind., 2006);
12. Patrick Griffin, American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier (New York, 2007);
13. and Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850, 3rd ed. (Bloomington, Ind., 2008).
14. For a consideration of why the "West" so often gets overlooked in U.S. surveys, see James A. Hijiya, "Why the West Is Lost," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 51 (April 1994): 276-292,
15. along with the comments that follow in "Comments and Response," ibid. 51 (October 1994): 717-754.
16. An exception to the French neglect of the trans-Appalachian West after 1763 is the outstanding study by Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal, Histoire de l'Amérique française, rev. ed. (Paris, 2006), 671-719.
17. A few historians have recently begun to take broader perspectives on the region. See Andrew R. L. Cayton, " 'While We Are in the World, We Must Converse with the World': The Significance of Ohio in World History," in Geoffrey Parker, Richard Sisson, and William Russell Coil, eds., Ohio and the World, 1753-2053: Essays toward a New History of Ohio (Columbus, Ohio, 2005), 1-22;
18. Fred Anderson and Andrew Cayton, The Dominion of War: Empire and Liberty in North America, 1500-2000 (New York, 2005), esp. 104-206;
19. Paul W. Mapp, "French Geographic Conceptions of the Unexplored American West and the Louisiana Cession of 1762," in Bradley G. Bond, ed., French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World (Baton Rouge, La., 2005), 134-174;
20. and Mapp, "Atlantic History from Imperial, Continental, and Pacific Perspectives," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 63 (October 2006): 713-724.
21. Jack P. Greene has recently urged historians to recognize "the profound continuities between the colonial and national segments of the American past." Greene, "Colonial History and National History," 248-249.
22. It is something that Greg Nobles notably accomplished in American Frontiers; my thanks to him for suggesting the idea of a "Long Seven Years' War." Thomas Bender, too, has recently suggested that the period from 1754 to 1783 should be seen as "a continuous war." Bender, A Nation among Nations: America's Place in World History (New York, 2006), 79-87.
23. The phrase "facing east" is borrowed from Richter, Facing East; "mutual weakness" is from White, The Middle Ground, 351;
24. "diplomatic, economic, judicial, and family ways" is from Kathleen DuVal, The Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent (Philadelphia, 2006), 118.
25. For the Native context, see also Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (Cambridge, 1995).
26. On these events, the best account is Fred Anderson, The Crucible of War: The Seven Years' War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766 (New York, 2000).
27. "You have not yet conquered us!" is quoted in Robert S. Allen, His Majesty's Indian Allies: British Indian Policy in the Defence of Canada, 1774-1815 (Toronto, 1992), 32;
28. British official quoted in Cal-loway, American Revolution, and in Alan Taylor, The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution (New York, 2006), 7.
29. "Neither the capitulation at Montreal nor the Treaty of Paris," historians Gilles Havard and Cécile Vidal rightly observe, "ended their war against the British"; L'Amérique française, 678 (my translation).
30. For geopolitics in the Ohio Valley, see Hin-deraker, Elusive Empires;
31. in the Great Lakes region, see especially White, The Middle Ground;
32. in Iro-quoia, see Taylor, The Divided Ground;
33. in the Southwest, see Daniel H. Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley before 1783 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1992), esp. 77-104;
34. in the Missouri area, see Aron, American Confluence; and generally in the back-country, see Richter, Facing East, 151-188;
35. Nobles, American Frontiers, 57-96;
36. Havard and Vidal, L'Amérique française; and Eric Hinderaker and Peter C. Mancall, At the Edge of Empire: The Backcountry in British North America (Baltimore, Md., 2003).
37. "Grown too powerfull" is quoted in White, The Middle Ground, 278;
38. Colin G. Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen: 1763 and the Transformation of North America (Oxford, 2006), 66;
39. and Richter, Facing East, 164. "Pernicious vermin" is from Havard and Vidal, L'Amérique française, 674 (my translation);
40. "it is not my intention" is from Allen, His Majesty's Indian Allies, 32;
41. Johnson quoted in Taylor, The Divided Ground, 16.
42. The most complete study of Pontiac's War is Gregory Dowd, War under Heaven: Pontiac, the Indian Nations, and the British Empire (Baltimore, Md., 2002).
43. On Native fears of English power, see also Richter, Facing East, 193;
44. Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 121.
45. "Don't abandon your children" and the forty-seven villages are from Havard and Vidal, L'Amérique française, 677-678.
46. On this issue, see also Dowd, War under Heaven, 112-113;
47. Allen, His Majesty's Indian Allies, 34;
48. White, The Middle Ground, 275-279;
49. and, among other sources, François-Alexandre- Frédéric la Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Voyage dans les États-Unis d'Amérique, fait en 1795, 1796 et 1797, 8 vols. (Paris, 1799), 1: 78.
50. White, The Middle Ground, xi;
51. Greene, "Colonial History and National History," 240-241.
52. On frontiers, see John Mack Faragher, "The Frontier Trail: Rethinking Turner and Reimagining the American West," American Historical Review 98, no. 1 (February 1993): 106-117,
53. and the works cited therein, along with Nobles, American Frontiers;
54. on borderlands, see Jeremy Adelman and Stephen Aron, "From Borderlands to Borders: Empires, Nation-States, and the Peoples in Between in North American History," American Historical Review 104, no. 3 (June 1999): 814-841,
55. along with the responses in "Forum Essay: Responses," American Historical Review 104, no. 4 (October 1999): 1221-1239, and the works cited therein;
56. and Aron, American Confluence.
57. On marchlands, see Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (New York, 1986), 112-131;
58. Bailyn and Philip D. Morgan, Strangers within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1991);
59. and Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 62-64.
60. On native grounds, see DuVal, The Native Ground;
61. on middle grounds, see White, The Middle Ground;
62. on divided grounds, see Taylor, The Divided Ground. The "new imperial history" mostly addresses the British Empire;
63. for an excellent survey of its themes, see Kathleen Wilson, "Introduction," in Wilson, ed., A New Imperial History: Culture, Identity, and Modernity in Britain and the Empire, 1660-1840 (Cambridge, 2004), 1-26, along with the works cited therein.
64. My use of "edges" makes reference to Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire;
65. and to Maya Jasanoff, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850 (New York, 2005), one of the finer studies in the new imperial vein.
66. By older diplomatic history perspectives, I have in mind work such as Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack on Louisiana and the Floridas," American Historical Review 3, no. 4 (July 1898): 650-671;
67. Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley in the Period of Washington and Adams," American Historical Review 10, no. 2 (January 1905): 249-279;
68. J. A. James, "Louisiana as a Factor in American Diplomacy, 1795-1800," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 1, no. 1 (June 1914): 44-56;
69. Arthur Preston Whitaker, The Spanish-American Frontier, 1783-1795: The Westward Movement and the Spanish Retreat in the Mississippi Valley (Boston, 1927);
70. Lawrence S. Kaplan, Colonies into Nation: American Diplomacy, 1763-1801 (New York, 1972).
71. A recent debate between peripheries and centers in Atlantic history occurred here in the AHR: Eliga H. Gould, "Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds: The English-Speaking Atlantic as a Spanish Periphery," American Historical Review 112, no. 3 (June 2007): 764-786;
72. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, "Entangled Histories: Borderland Historiographies in New Clothes?" ibid., 787-799;
73. Gould, "Entangled Atlantic Histories: A Response from the Anglo-American Periphery," American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (December 2007): 1415-1422;
74. and Cañizares-Esguerra, "The Core and Peripheries of Our National Narratives: A Response from IH-35," ibid., 1423-1431.
75. Eliga H. Gould, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2000), esp. 106-147;
76. David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000), 100-145;
77. Christopher Leslie Brown, Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 155-161, 213-228.
78. Quotations from the Royal Proclamation are drawn from the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/proc1763.htm (accessed April 14, 2008);
79. "deeply antithetical to the interests" is from Richter, Facing East, 215.
80. On the impact of the Royal Proclamation, see Edward Samuel Corwin, French Policy and the American Alliance of 1778 (1916; repr., Gloucester, Mass., 1969), 225 n. 4;
81. Meinig, The Shaping of America, 1: 295-296;
82. Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 164-169.
83. On British policy during this period, see Meinig, The Shaping of America, 1: 284-307.
84. Land speculation is a major - and largely underreported - part of this story. On land speculation as it bears on these issues, see especially Charles Royster, The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company: A Story of George Washington's Times (New York, 1999);
85. W. J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1783, rev. ed. (Markham, Ont., 1998), 198, 245-246;
86. Richter, Facing East, 200, 211, 214;
87. Hinderaker and Mancall, At the Edge of Empire, 125-133.
88. On sinister designs and revolution, see Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays (New York, 1965),
89. and Gordon S. Wood, "Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 39 (July 1982): 401-441.
90. On white Americans' fear of being made "slaves," see François Furstenberg, In the Name of the Father: Washington's Legacy, Slavery, and the Making of a Nation (New York, 2006), esp. 193-199.
91. On Pontiac's War and the American Revolution as two wars for independence, see Richter, Facing East, 190.
92. On indigenous and settler rebellions, see Greene, "Colonial History and National History," 237-238.
93. Whitaker, The Spanish-American Frontier, 1;
94. Bender, A Nation among Nations, 102.
95. On this issue, see Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley";
96. Corwin, French Policy, 228;
97. Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 168-169;
98. Marie-Jeanne Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste: Aux origines de la politique extérieure des Etats-Unis, 1789-1812 (Paris, 1994), 47, 50.
99. This book has been translated into English and published as The Nationalist Ferment: The Origins of U.S. Foreign Policy, 1789-1812, trans. Lillian A. Parrott (Columbus, Ohio, 2004).
100. John Holroyd, Earl of Sheffield, Observations on the Commerce of the American States (Dublin, 1784);
101. see also Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 161.
102. "Shared their Native allies' sense of betrayal" is from Richter, Facing East, 224;
103. the quote from the U.S. congressman is from Annals of Congress, 2nd Cong., 1st sess., 338,
104. quoted in Julius William Pratt, Expansionists of 1812 (1925; repr., Gloucester, Mass., 1957), 20.
105. On this issue, see also Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 163-167;
106. Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste, 313-321;
107. Allen, His Majesty's Indian Allies, 12-86;
108. Colin G. Calloway, Crown and Calumet: British-Indian Relations, 1783-1815 (Norman, Okla., 1987), esp. 5-13;
109. White, The Middle Ground, 413-517;
110. Hinder-aker, Elusive Empires, 226-267;
111. and from a different perspective, Matthew Rainbow Hale, "Neither Britons nor Frenchmen: The French Revolution and American National Identity" (Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2002), 105-106.
112. Aranda quoted in David J. Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 199.
113. See also Corwin, French Policy, 228.
114. Spanish imperialism in Louisiana thus perpetuated the French policy of alliance with what a French governor in 1744 had called "the Indian nations that serve as a barrier on this continent." Quoted in Usner, Indians, Settlers, and Slaves, 78.
115. See also Peter J. Kastor, The Nation's Crucible: The Louisiana Purchase and the Creation of America (New Haven, Conn., 2004), 25-26.
116. Gálvez quoted in Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 230.
117. For social and diplomatic conditions in Louisiana, see Kastor, The Nation's Crucible, 25-34;
118. on Louisiana demography, see the essays by James Pritchard and Paul Lachance in Bond, French Colonial Louisiana and the Atlantic World;
119. on French officers in the Arkansas Valley, see DuVal, The Native Ground, 118-151;
120. on Gálvez and Spanish policy more generally, see Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 204-270;
121. DuVal, The Native Ground, 158-159;
122. and Bender, A Nation among Nations, 68, 75-76. Many thanks to Richard Kagan for telling me about the Gálvez connection.
123. Spanish official quoted in Corwin, French Policy, 109;
124. "Spanish lake" is from Whitaker, The Spanish-American Frontier, 3,
125. and Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 265.
126. On Spanish diplomacy during the Revolution, see also Corwin, French Policy, 105-120, 266-267, 227;
127. and Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 166-174.
128. Report of Montmorin to Vergennes, quoted in "Papers on Spain Received from Edmond Charles Genet, Enclosed in TJ, Memorandum to George Washington, dated July 11, 1793," in Julian P. Boyd et al., eds., The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, 33 vols. to date (Princeton, N.J., 1950-), 26: 477..
129. On the Spanish response to the American Revolution, see also Weber, The Spanish Frontier, 279-285;
130. James H. O'Donnell, Southern Indians in the American Revolution (Knoxville, Tenn., 1973), 95-98, 135, 138-139;
131. and, farther west, DuVal, The Native Ground, 158.
132. The phrase about turning points is borrowed from the great Trevelyan, who was referring to 1848. On 1763 as turning point, see Calloway, The Scratch of a Pen.
133. "Mémoire sur le commerce de France, avec les États-Unis en France" [1786], Marine B/7/460, Archives Nationales, Paris [hereafter AN]. The importance of mercantilist thinking is stressed in Corwin, French Policy, 17-21.
134. On French-British rivalry for global hegemony, see Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century, trans. Sian Reynolds, 3 vols. (London, 1985), 3: 379;
135. Giovanni Ar-righi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London, 1994), 47-58;
136. and Beverly J. Silver and Eric Slater, "The Social Origins of World Hegemonies," in Giovanni Arrighi and Beverly J. Silver, eds., Chaos and Governance in the World System (Minneapolis, 1999), esp. 159-176.
137. Jasanoff, Edge of Empire, makes this rivalry a central theme.
138. On the hopes to turn the trans-Appalachian West into neutral Native American territory, see Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley," 250;
139. Eccles, The French in North America, 264.
140. On French ambitions for Louisiana, see Henry Adams, History of the United States of America during the Administrations of James Madison (repr., New York, 1986), 239;
141. Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley," 249-279;
142. Corwin, French Policy, 9-11, 233, 240-242, 282;
143. Kaplan, Colonies into Nation;
144. and Eccles, The French in North America, 248-252.
145. er thermidor an 9, Georgetown, C.P. États-Unis, vol. 53, p. 173, Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, Quai d'Orsay, Paris [hereafter MAÉ]. "Je lui [Madison] rappellai qu'au contraire le traité de 1778 était conçu de manière à exclure cette colonie [la Louisiane] de la (Re(é)nonciation). Je l'assurai que depuis la Révolution on y avait sérieusement songé plusieurs fois."
146. M. Demoustier, "Considérations sur quelques objets qui intéressent particulièrement la Marine du Roi, par une suite des nouveaux rapports qui dérivent de la Souveraineté des États Unis de l'Amérique," December 12, 1788, Marine B/7/461, AN;
147. on the lumber reports, see "Compte rendu par M. Rolland sous-ingénieur constructeur sur des bois de l'Amérique Septentrionale," December 23, 1785;
148. "Suite des observations déjà adressées par M. Rolland, sous-ingénieur constructeur . . . ," March 31, 1786;
149. and others, all in Marine B/7/460, AN.
150. "Reciprocal interest" is from Demoustier, "Considé rations sur quelques objets." For a fine analysis of commerce and the Franco-American relationship, see Marcel Dorigny, "La Libre Amérique selon Brissot et Clavière: Modèle politique, utopie libérale et réalisme economique," in Dorigny, ed., De la France et des États-Unis: Étienne Clavière et J.-P. Brissot de Warville (Paris, 1996), 7-29.
151. On failed French hopes to capture the U.S. market, see Eccles, The French in North America, 265;
152. Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 175.
153. On the pro-American, anti-mercantilist circles in Paris, see Durand Echeverria, Mirage in the West: A History of the French Image of American Society to 1815 (New York, 1966), esp. 24-31, 41-42, 130-132.
154. The outstanding discussion on this subject is to be found in Rossignol, Le ferment nationalist, 31-65.
155. See also the excellent analysis in Cayton, The Frontier Republic. Hinderaker rightly observes: "The Revolution may have begun on the seaboard, but it would be really tested in the west." Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 227.
156. Michael Warner, "What's Colonial about Colonial America," in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Possible Pasts: Becoming Colonial in Early America (Ithaca, N.Y., 2000), 49-70, quotation at 50.
157. See also Greene, "Colonial History and National History," 235.
158. On mapping and the West, see also Albert Furt-wangler, Acts of Discovery: Visions of America in the Lewis and Clark Journals (Urbana, Ill., 1993), 84-86;
159. Gregory H. Nobles, "Straight Lines and Stability: Mapping the Political Order of the Anglo-American Frontier," Journal of American History 80 (June 1993): 9-35, 25;
160. Nobles, American Frontiers, 60-62;
161. and Martin Brückner, The Geographic Revolution in Early America: Maps, Literacy, and National Identity (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2006), 211.
162. Adams, History of the United States, 6.
163. On the two roads, see especially Anderson, The Crucible of War;
164. also Albert Perry Brigham, "The Great Roads across the Appalachians," Bulletin of the American Geographical Society 37 (1905): 321-339.
165. By roads, I mean something on which one could drive a wagon.
166. Constantin-François Volney, Tableau du climat et du sol des États-Unis d'Amérique (Paris, 1825), 19;
167. for settlement near the tidewater, see Adams, History of the United States, 5;
168. Malcolm J. Rohrbough, The Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (New York, 1978), 113.
169. For ships sailing into the Caribbean, see Pichon to Talleyrand, 14 prairial an 9, C.P. États-Unis, vol. 53, p. 140, MAÉ;
170. for shipbuilding in Marietta, see Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 30;
171. "the key to the West" is from "Extrait d'un mémoire sur les rapports commerciaux de l'Amérique septentrionale avec l'Europe," AF IV 1211, doc. 58, AN.
172. Thus, a Pittsburgh newspaper in 1787 complained vociferously about Spanish imperial policy, which left its residents "destitute of any market for the produce of our soil." Quoted in Griffin, American Leviathan, 218.
173. Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 232, 243;
174. Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste, 47.
175. On the American Revolution continuing in the West into the 1790s, see Griffin, American Leviathan.
176. "Crisis of integration" is from John M. Murrin, "1776: The Countercyclical Revolution," in Michael A. Morrison and Melinda S. Zook, eds., Revolutionary Currents: Nation Building in the Transatlantic World (Lanham, Md., 2004), 65-90;
177. "were potentially much stronger" is from Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 202.
178. On the tenuous national loyalties of settlers, see especially ibid., 236-260;
179. Cayton, "Separate Interests";
180. Nobles, "Straight Lines and Stability," 28, 34-35;
181. Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste, 58-65;
182. Griffin, American Leviathan, 212-239.
183. On politics in the backcountry and settlers' distrust of elite authority, see also Thomas P. Slaughter, The Whiskey Rebellion: Frontier Epilogue to the American Revolution (New York, 1986);
184. Cayton, The Frontier Republic;
185. Alan Taylor, Liberty Men and Great Proprietors: The Revolutionary Settlement on the Maine Frontier, 1760-1820 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1990);
186. Michael A. Bellesiles, Revolutionary Outlaws: Ethan Allen and the Struggle for Independence on the Early American Frontier (Charlottesville, Va., 1993);
187. and Nobles, American Frontiers.
188. The support of backcountry settlers during the Revolution, according to Eric Hinderaker, was based as much on "calculations of mutual interest and convenience" as on long-term national loyalty. Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 199.
189. The figure of 350 troops is from Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 38;
190. "choose lands for a settlement" is from the Salem Mercury, May 19, 1789,
191. and Griffin, American Leviathan, 224 (who quotes this same text from the Pennsylvania Gazette);
192. "a parcel of banditti," "our own white Indians," and "will one Day give us trouble" are all quoted in Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 7, 8, 23.
193. On settler conflict with the U.S. army, see also Andrew R. L. Cayton, "The Significance of Ohio in the Early American Republic," in Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs, eds., The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early American Republic (Athens, Ohio, 2005), 1-10;
194. Patrick Griffin, "Reconsidering the Ideological Origins of Indian Removal," ibid., 11-35, esp. 19;
195. and Griffin, American Leviathan, 212-213.
196. On Jay's 1780s diplomacy, see Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 171-174;
197. on the response, see Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 23.
198. On Federalist contempt for settlers, see also Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 239, 246;
199. Hinderaker and Man-call, At the Edge of Empire, 133-140;
200. and especially Lewis, The American Union and the Problem of Neighborhood.
201. Cayton, "Separate Interests," 44;
202. Jefferson to James Madison, June 10, 1787, quoted in Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 23.
203. On threats of western secession, see also Kaplan, Colonies into Nation, 167.
204. On British military opportunities in the Great Lakes and the Mississippi, see George W. Kyte, "A Spy on the Western Waters: The Military Intelligence Mission of General Collot in 1796," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 34 (December 1947): 427-442, esp. 438.
205. On late loyalists, see Alan Taylor, "The Late Loyalists: Northern Reflections of the Early American Republic," Journal of the Early Republic 27 (Spring 2007): 1-24.
206. John Clement Fitzpatrick, ed., The Writings of George Washington from the Original Manuscript Sources, 1745-1799, 39 vols. (Washington, 1931), 35: 214-238.
207. On these geopolitical issues, see also Meinig, The Shaping of America, 2: 4-14;
208. Gregory H. Nobles, "Breaking into the Backcountry: New Approaches to the Early American Frontier, 1750-1800," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 46 (October 1989): 641-679, esp. 668;
209. Hinderaker, Elusive Empires, 252.
210. Washington, it bears noting, began his career surveying western territories, was an early stockholder in the Virginia Company of Ohio, was granted vast tracts of land in the Ohio Valley for his military service, and died holding 9,744 acres of choice land along the Ohio River, and more than 31,000 acres in other parts of the Ohio Valley. See http://gwpapers.virginia. edu/documents/will/property.html (accessed April 14, 2008).
211. For more on Washington and land, see especially Royster, The Fabulous History of the Dismal Swamp Company.
212. On efforts by the federal government to assert itself in the West, see Cayton, "Separate Interests," and Cayton, The Frontier Republic, 1-80.
213. On the role of the federal state in promoting western expansion in the Southwest, see Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South (Cambridge, Mass., 2005).
214. In the 1790s, "the frontier of every state south of New York experienced unrest." Slaughter, Whiskey Rebellion, 117;
215. see also 46-60.
216. On frontier unrest in this period, see especially Nobles, American Frontiers, 99-132.
217. On the impact of the French Revolution in the United States, see especially Simon P. Newman, Parades and Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic (Philadelphia, 1997).
218. See also David Brion Davis, Revolutions: Reflections on American Equality and Foreign Liberations (Cambridge, Mass., 1990);
219. Stanley M. Elkins and Eric L. McKitrick, The Age of Federalism (New York, 1993);
220. David Brion Davis, "The Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions," in David P. Geggus, ed., The Impact of the Haitian Revolution in the Atlantic World (Columbia, S.C., 2001), 3-9;
221. David Waldstreicher, In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1997);
222. Seth Aaron Cotlar, "In Paine's Absence: The Trans-Atlantic Dynamics of American Popular Political Thought, 1789-1804" (Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 2000);
223. Hale, "Neither Britons nor Frenchmen." No work that I know of has examined the sectional impact of the French Revolution on the United States.
224. "Neglect bordering on contempt" is quoted in Griffin, "Reconsidering the Ideological Origins of Indian Removal," 28;
225. "patriotism, like every other thing," is quoted in Jon Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (New York, 2003), 169.
226. On Blount, see Arthur Preston Whitaker, The Mississippi Question, 1795-1803 (Gloucester, Mass., 1962), 105-107;
227. Frederick Jackson Turner, "Documents on the Blount Conspiracy, 1795-1797," American Historical Review 10, no. 3 (April 1905): 574-606;
228. and John Arthur Garraty and Mark C. Carnes, American National Biography, 24 vols. (New York, 1999), s.v. "William Blount."
229. All these quotations are from Griffin, American Leviathan, 233-234.
230. See also Nobles, American Frontiers, 99-103.
231. J. P. Brissot de Warville, Nouveau voyage dans les États-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale: Fait en 1788, 3 vols. (Paris, 1791), 2: 435, 434.
232. On Brissot and Genet, see Turner, "The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack," 661;
233. Marcel Dorigny, "Sonthanax et Brissot: Le cheminement d'une filiation politique assumée,"Revue française de l'histoire d'outre-mer 84 (1997): 36;
234. and Tamara Corriveau, "Jacques-Pierre Brissot, Étienne Clavière et la libre Amérique: Du gallo-américanisme à la mission Genet" (MA. thesis, Université de Montreal, 2008).
235. "Major General in the armies of France" is from Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense, 176;
236. George Rogers Clark, "George Rogers Clark to Genet, 1794," American Historical Review 18, no. 4 (July 1913): 780-783.
237. For Genet's plan, see Frederick Jackson Turner, ed., Correspondence of the French Ministers to the United States, 1791-1797 (Washington, D.C, 1904), 204-205;
238. on Clark, see Turner, "The Origin of Genet's Projected Attack";
239. Editorial Note, "Jefferson and André Michaux's Proposed Western Expedition," in Boyd et al., Papers, 25: 75-81;
240. Kukla, A Wilderness So Immense, 156-178;
241. and Havard and Vidal, L Amérique française, 701-703.
242. On Genet's western antics, see also François Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane et de la cession de cette colonie par la France aux États-Unis de l'Amérique Septentrionale: Précé dée d'un discours sur la constitution et le gouvernement des États-Unis (Paris, 1829), 168-173.
243. Clark had fought the British during the American Revolution with a band of Kentuckians in close alliance with French habitants in the country - so close, in fact, that he claimed at the time to be fighting in the name of the king of France.
244. On Clark's revolutionary activities, see Havard and Vidal, L Amérique française, 688.
245. Boston Gazette quoted in Hale, "Neither Britons nor Frenchmen," 107.
246. Richter, Facing East, 235;
247. Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste, 56-57.
248. In this respect, contra the work of James Lewis and Peter Onuf, it could be argued that Federalists, far more than Republicans, were most responsive to the demands of western settlers.
249. Carolyn E. Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below (Knoxville, Tenn., 1990), 22-23;
250. Bernard Gainot and Marcel Dorigny, Atlas des esclavages (Paris, 2006), 22-23;
251. Davis, "The Impact of the French and Haitian Revolutions," 4;
252. Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004), 21, 22, 30. If the township of Northern Liberties is included in the Philadelphia population figures, the total is 38,435.
253. American export figures from Ashli White, " 'A Flood of Impure Lava': Saint Dominguan Refugees in the United States, 1791-1820" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 2003), 53-55;
254. Jefferson quoted in Fauchet to the Commissioner of Foreign Relations, in Turner, Correspondence of the French Ministers, 564;
255. also quoted in White, "A Flood of Impure Lava," 54.
256. er thermidor an 9, Georgetown, C.P. États-Unis, vol. 53, p. 171, MAÉ.
257. On migration from Saint Domingue to the United States, see especially White, "A Flood of Impure Lava";
258. on transatlantic French refugee networks, see especially Darrell R. Meadows, "Engineering Exile: Social Networks and the French Atlantic Community, 1789-1809," French Historical Studies 23 (Winter 2000): 67-102.
259. On Franco-British warfare in the Caribbean and the transformation of slaves into citizens, see especially Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787-1804 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2004).
260. "Great advantages" is from [Antoine René Charles Mathurin] de la Forest, "Mémoire sur la situation actuelle des États Unis relativement [sic] à l'industrie américaine et au commerce étranger," New York, February 18, 1789, Marine B/7/461, AN;
261. "Treaty of Amity and Commerce between the United States and France; February 6, 1778," the Avalon Project at Yale Law School, http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/france/fr1788-1.htm (accessed April 14, 2008).
262. Article 21 of the French Treaty, from which the above quotation is drawn, was one that Genet's instructions specifically highlighted, directing that it be "religiously observed." See Genet's instructions, reprinted in Turner, Correspondence of the French Ministers, 208.
263. "By the acquisition" is from J. A. James, "Louisiana as a Factor in American Diplomacy, 1795-1800," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 1 (June 1914): 45;
264. "retain it in the line of duty" is quoted in Turner, "The Policy of France toward the Mississippi Valley," 269;
265. "hold forth every allurement" is from the New York Daily Advertiser, February 12, 1802;
266. excerpts quoted in French in Pichon to Talleyrand, 2 ventose an 10, C.P. États-Unis, vol. 54, MAÉ;
267. "a few French troops" is quoted in Rothman, Slave Country, 16.
268. See also "Mémoire abrégé de la Louisiane présenté au Général Bonaparte, premier consul de la République françoise par le général de division, Victor," le Quinze Thermidor de l'An 10è, AF IV 1211, doc. 53, AN.
269. On biracial French crews in the Caribbean, see especially Dubois, A Colony of Citizens. The prospect of French control of the Mississippi River was, according to Peter Kastor, "nothing less than a fundamental threat to the preservation of the union." Kastor, The Nation's Crucible, 38.
270. Adams, History of the United States, 256, 264.
271. See also Rossignol, Le ferment nationaliste, 246.
272. CIA World Factbook, https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world- factbook/geos/zh.html (accessed April 14, 2008).
273. On the pirate stronghold, see Marion Emerson Murphy, The History of Guan-tanamo Bay, 2nd ed. (Guantánamo Bay, 1953).
274. The figure of 80,000 is from Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 251;
275. "There is on the globe" is quoted in Kyte, "A Spy on the Western Waters," 433, and in Meinig, The Shaping of America, 2: 10;
276. "the Cannibals of the terrible republic" is from Jefferson to Aaron Burr, February 11, 1799, in Boyd et al., Papers, 31: 22;
277. "black crews, supercargoes & missionaries" is from Jefferson to Madison, February 12, 1799, ibid., 29-30.
278. On Jefferson and Haiti, see Michael Zuckerman, "The Power of Blackness: Thomas Jefferson and the Revolution in Saint-Domingue," in Zuckerman, Almost Chosen People: Oblique Biographies in the American Grain (Berkeley, Calif., 1993), 175-218;
279. Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1968), 375-386;
280. Tim Matthewson, "Jefferson and Haiti," Journal of Southern History 61 (1995): 209-248;
281. Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (Charlottesville, Va., 2000);
282. and Garry Wills, "Negro President": Jefferson and the Slave Power (Boston, 2003).
283. Talleyrand's threats quoted in Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 260;
284. Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Essai sur les avantages à retirer de colonies nouvelles dans les circonstances présentes, par le citoyen Talleyrand: Lu à la séance publique le 15 messidor an 5 (Paris, 1798), esp. 12-13. Dubois, it should be noted, does not believe that these diplomatic threats made to Britain were serious.
285. The cited figure of 50,000 is from Dubois, Avengers of the New World, 298.
286. Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane, 219;
287. Napoleon quoted ibid., 287 (my translation).
288. On Jefferson's diplomacy vis-à-vis Haiti, see Robin Blackburn, "Haiti, Slavery, and the Age of Democratic Revolution," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd. ser., 65 (October 2006): 643-674;
289. Guillaume Simard, "Les relations diplomatiques franco- américaines lors de l'expédition du général Leclerc: Le commerce, le territoire, la race et l'opinion, 1800-1804" (M.A. thesis, Université de Montréal, 2007).
290. On French worries about losing access to the Gulf of Mexico, see Mémoire Secret, doss: "Iles d'Amérique," AF IV 1211, doc. 32, AN.
291. On the strategic issues more generally, see Yves Bénot, La démence coloniale sous Napoléon: Essai (Paris, 1992), 102.
292. On the reorientation of Napoleon's foreign policy after Haiti, see Yves Bénot and Marcel Dorigny, R établissement de l'esclavage dans les colonies françaises, 1802: Ruptures et continuités de la politique coloniale française, 1800-1830: Aux origines d'Haiti: Actes du colloque international tenu à l'Université de Paris VIII les 20, 21 et 22 juin 2002 (Paris, 2003), especially the contribution by Alyssa Sepinwell.
293. On the importance of the Haitian Revolution to this reorientation, see Robert L. Paquette, "Revolutionary Saint Domingue in the Making of Territorial Louisiana," in David Barry Gaspar and David Patrick Geggus, eds., A Turbulent Time: The French Revolution and the Greater Caribbean (Bloomington, Ind., 1997), 204-225.
294. Barbé-Marbois, Histoire de la Louisiane, 287, 284-285 (my translation);
295. Livingston quoted in Min-istre de la Marine et des Colonies aux Premier Consul, 29 Frimaire, an 11, AF IV 1190, doc. 39, AN;
296. Addington quote from "Memorandum, Account of Week's Events by Sir F. Baring," N. D. Northbrook Papers, 1 A4.13, Baring Archives, London.
297. See also Mémoires et Nottes [sic] sur la Louisiane et les Florides, AF IV 1211, doc. 55, AN;
298. and Pichon to Talleyrand, 14 prairial, an 9, C.P. États-Unis, vol. 56, p. 140, MAÉ;
299. Kastor, The Nation's Crucible, 40.
300. White, The Middle Ground, 53, 54, 512-513;
301. Reginald Horsman, "British Indian Policy in the Northwest, 1807-1812," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45, no. 1 (June 1958): 51-66;
302. Richter, Facing East, 228.
303. The account of the War of 1812 as a war driven by western settler interests was first put forth by a follower of Frederick Jackson Turner's; see Pratt, Expansionists of 1812.
304. Richter, Facing East, 228-235;
305. White, The Middle Ground, 502-503, 514.
306. Quotations from Henry Clay, The Life and Speeches of Henry Clay, 2 vols. (Philadelphia, 1859), 1: 81-82, 85.
307. See also Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Urbana, Ill., 1989), 289-294.
308. Hart quoted in John Higham, History: Professional Scholarship in America, updated pbk. ed. (Baltimore, Md., 1989), 161;
309. Frederick Jackson Turner, "The Significance of the Frontier in American History," in Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1893 (Washington, D.C., 1894), 200;
310. "the site of Europe's negation" is from Daniel Rodgers, "Exceptionalism," in Anthony Molho and Gordon S. Wood, eds., Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past (Princeton, N.J., 1988), 25. On the imperial school, see especially Jack P. Greene, "The Flight from Determinism: A Review of Recent Literature on the Coming of the American Revolution," South Atlantic Quarterly 61, no. 2 (1962): 235-259.
311. The literature on Turner and exceptionalism is vast; see, however, in addition to Rodg-ers and Higham, Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge, 1991), 266-267.
312. Much of it cited in this article.
313. On entangled history or histoire croisé e, see Sanjay Subrahmanyam, "Connected Histories: Notes towards a Reconfiguration of Early Modern Eurasia," Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997): 735-762;
314. Subrahmanyam, From the Tagus to the Ganges (New Delhi, 2005);
315. Subrahmanyam, "Holding the World in Balance: The Connected Histories of the Iberian Overseas Empires, 1500-1640," American Historical Review 112, no. 5 (December 2007): 1359-1385;
316. Gould, "Entangled Histories, Entangled Worlds"; Gould, "Entangled Atlantic Histories."