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  • River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790–1850
  • Gretchen A. Adams
River of Enterprise: The Commercial Origins of Regional Identity in the Ohio Valley, 1790–1850. By Kim M. Gruenwald (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002) 224 pp. $39.95

In her 1852 novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe created an indelible image of a desperate escape from southern slavery. The image of a mother and her infant racing furiously across the ice floes of [End Page 653] the Ohio River to freedom became a staple of the emotional appeal of abolitionists until the Civil War. In the northern imagination, at least, the Ohio River became a stark boundary. But boundaries between neighbors in the region where fictional (and many real) escapes took place were, in fact, more complex. In this deeply researched and compelling study, Gruenwald argues that residents of both sides of this river had long shared a deeper common regional identity forged in the settlement and commercial development of the Ohio River valley during the decades before Civil War.

Dudley Woodbridge and his family were just one of many groups of enterprising Americans who headed to the "western country" of what became Marietta, Ohio, after the Revolution in search of opportunity. Gruenwald's impressive research of the Woodbridges' multigenerational economic life provides a framework for the study. The Woodbridges, their networks of suppliers, traders, and customers on the Ohio populate this dynamic region and show the cultural consequences of commerce. At the heart of this story is the Ohio River and the orientation of the communities on its banks to it as an engine of commerce and connection. As the Woodbridges and their neighbors prospered, the frontier moved west; the older settlements became established towns within organized states; and residents of each bank were drawn away from the river. Changes in technology allowed canals and railroads to supplant riverine commerce and change the nature of the relationship between communities of the northern and southern banks. By pulling on loyalties, political developments also created competing state (and ultimately sectional) identities.

What Gruenwald has uncovered makes the book intriguing for historians interested in the decades after 1850, when her story ends. Despite her conclusion that these regional ties were "severed completely" by war, evidence to the contrary buttresses her claim of identity formation through mutual economic enterprise (152). Kentucky's refusal to secede, West Virginia's creation, and the suspicions cast on the southern sections of Ohio and Indiana that bordered the Ohio River during the Civil War raise questions about the nature of identity and the politics of loyalty. When does local identity trump (or at least complicate) broader national identities?

One quibble with this book is its emphasis upon the Ohio side of the river. More attention to the southern bank would serve to bolster already reasonable conclusions about commercial culture and identity formation. But on the whole, this book is rich in detail and impressive in its analysis. It extends our knowledge about post-Revolutionary expansion and how it shaped identity.

Gretchen A. Adams
Texas Tech University
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