Dissertation

"WRITTEN INTO THE WEST: PRINT-VISIONS AND THE REVOLUTIONARY INHERITANCE IN EARLY NATIONAL AMERICA'S 'WESTERN COUNTRY'."

Around the midpoint of the eighteenth century, colonial Americans began to speak, write, and dream about the “Western Country,” the boundless territory beyond the Appalachian Mountains.  With independence, the Western Country gained significance not only as a place hosting ever more settlers but as a vision of the nation’s future; it would be the laboratory for testing the American experiment.  There were, inevitably, divergences between this envisioned Western Country and its experienced reality.  Among the settlers, a handful of writers, editors, and printers imbibed with Revolution-fueled ambitions and ideals about the power of publication volunteered themselves as mediators between vision and reality through the region’s nascent print culture.  This dissertation focuses on these commentators’ attempts to imprint their visions onto the western experience, and the enduring regional and national effects of their efforts.  It contends that their successes and shortcomings alike wrote the Western Country into the ongoing struggle to define the Revolutionary inheritance across an antebellum republic of aggressive expansion and ambiguous unity. 

Influenced by works that emphasize the cultural dimensions of politics and print, elucidate the construction of languages of place, and reconceptualize contact and conquest, this dissertation reintroduces the Western Country to modern scholarship as a confluence of visions, experiences, and articulations that contributed a model and a vocabulary to the young republic.  It approaches this task primarily by examining the motivations and publications of several of the region’s print-commentators, including Hugh Henry Brackenridge, John Bradford, and Zadok Cramer.  Its chapters highlight the conceptual baggage carried westward and the attempts to claim an American future out of the natural and Native worlds; connect the commentators’ print-visions to regional themes with national implications, including purity, legitimacy, and utility; and follow the Western Country through its wartime apex, apparent demise, and enduring influence into the Civil War era via western sons Daniel Drake and Henry Marie Brackenridge.  The Western Country was fated to be a short-lived and forgotten place, yet its existence echoed in the visions and words of subsequent generations when they articulated a manifest national destiny, lamented social ills, or struggled to define “American-ness.” 

Future Research Possibilities

Among the many future projects that have popped into my head as I approach the finish line for my dissertation, I have considered writing a dual biography of two key figures from that project, father-and-son intellectuals and jurists Hugh Henry Brackenridge (1748-1816) and Henry Marie Brackenridge (1786-1871). From the Hugh Henry's recitation on "The Rising Glory of America" at Princeton's 1771 commencement ceremony to an aged Henry Marie's pleadings for a peaceful end to the Civil War, the writings of this pair on topics ranging from democratic governance to the Monroe Doctrine to ancient Indian ruins both represented and informed their combined American century. In any case, my research will likely continue to focus on American cultures of politics and print, continental expansion, and the connections between environment, inhabitants, and identity.

All in the Family (2012) [forthcoming]

“All in the Family:  Expressions of Discontent, Relationship Dilemmas, and the Question of Union in the Early National Ohio Valley,” accepted for inclusion in Filson Institute volume on “Secessions:  From the Revolution to Civil War,” eds. Glenn Crothers and Kevin Barksdale (Athens:  Ohio University Press, 2012) [forthcoming]

(see description from conference presentation below)

"Invisible Hands" (2005)

"Invisible Hands: Slaves, Bound Laborers, and the Development of Western Pennsylvania, 1780-1820," PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY 72, no. 1 (Winter 2005): 77-99.

SEE LINKS AT BOTTOM OF PAGE FOR ARTICLE

Winner of the 2007 Robert G. Crist Award for best article by a graduate student appearing in PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY during 2005-2006; awarded by Pennsylvania Historical Association, Oct. 2007.

This article challenges the longstanding assumption that slavery was unimportant -- at best a "status symbol" -- in western Pennsylvania, a claim based on the relatively few enslaved persons in the region, the passage of the state's Gradual Abolition Act in 1780, and antiquated racial views. In making this challenge, it draws from recent scholarship that has better elucidated the economic and social impacts of unfree and/or "hidden" labor. It contends that a) legal and de facto slavery were more prevalent for a longer period in the region than indicated by census records; b) unfree African American laborers who were congregated in key industries like iron production helped to spur rapid economic growth; c) even those supposed "status symbol" slaves (such as the domestics and field hands of the well-to-do) had a significant impact by freeing their masters to engage more fully in economic, cultural, and political life. The article relies significantly on county slave/indenture registries required by the 1780 law and on period newspapers.

Book Reviews

Review of The Lost State of Franklin:  America’s First Secession, by Kevin T. Barksdale, Journal of the Early Republic 32, no. 1 (2012) [forthcoming]

In progress (Fall 2011):  Review essay for Reviews in American History of Wyman, The Wisconsin Frontier; Ely, Where the West Begins; Nickerson and Dochuck, eds., Sunbelt Rising; and Kastor, William Clark's World

"All in the Family" (2010)

“All in the Family: Rituals and Rhetorics of Discontent and the Question of Union in the Ohio Valley, 1780-1820,” Filson Institute Academic Conference, “Secessions: From the Revolution to Civil War,” Louisville, KY, 23 October 2010.

This paper investigates the sources, expressions, and lasting influences of the rhetorics and rituals of discontent that elucidated a familial relationship between region and nation during the early republic era in the Ohio Valley. First, it identifies the characteristics of the public actions and pronouncements that came to comprise the region’s rhetoric of discontent, noting the influences of the Revolutionary era and before and the important role of the region’s budding print culture. Second, it delves into the variations within this family vocabulary, including analogies of the regional-national bond based on father-son, fraternal, dependent female, and subservient household relationships. Within this section, the influence of interactions with Ohio Valley Indians, the recurring concern about unstable gender and family relationships in less “civilized” settings, and the institution of slavery are highlighted as essential factors in shaping the distinctly-regional aspect to this rhetoric. Lastly, it demonstrates how this family construct under various guises shaped westerners’ words and actions – many of them secessionist – during the “Mississippi Question” of the 1780s and 1790s, the Whiskey Rebellion, and the Burr Conspiracy. It also follows the bumpy transition away from the language of family grievances in the decades after 1800, including the War of 1812, when some westerners tried to refashion their region as the Union’s new head of household, and points toward the lasting impact of this rhetorical tradition on a dysfunctional regional identity.

"Western Patriarchs" (2009)

“'Western Patriarchs': Leadership, Identity, and Print in the Early Republic's West,” Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, 31st Annual Meeting, Springfield, IL, July 2009.

This paper focuses on the efforts of two of the founders of a culture of print in the trans-Appalachian West, Hugh Henry Brackenridge and John Bradford. It argues that their differing approaches to utilizing – and self-representation in – print reflected their divergent interpretations of the post-Revolutionary environment and the path to respected leadership in the "Western Country." Both Brackenridge and Bradford were ambitious men who hoped to shape the Western Country into their ideal American vision, and their efforts in the nation’s first laboratory for experimentation with the fruits of Revolution reveal uncertainties about authority, identity, and the nature of a republican print culture. Neither man, nor the citizens they were trying to influence, were certain as to the criteria for leadership or the means of expressing the “people’s voice.” Both also had their loyalty to the Union questioned despite strong nationalist sentiments, a consequence of the delicate balancing act required to build a print persona as both regional leader and national visionary.

"Western Interests, Eastern Power" (2005)

“Western Interests, Eastern Power: The Constitutional Debate in Western Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania Historical Association, 74th Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, 21 October 2005.

This paper examines the role of two pressing regional issues, continuing violence with Native Americans and the lack of a securely-open Mississippi River, on the debate by western Pennsylvanians over the proposed federal Constitution in 1787-88. The state ratified the charter before westerners could fully engage in the debate, but they continued before and after the fact to weigh the pros and cons of the Constitution through the lens of their distinctly "western" issues. The region's only newspaper, the Pittsburgh Gazette, served as the primary forum for this debate.