Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West (review)

Although he modestly characterizes his work as a "biography of a road" (4), Craig Thompson Friend's study of Kentucky in the early republic is much more. He has written an imaginative, nuanced, and persuasive study of an evolving society, culture, and economy along the Maysville Road from the late eighteenth century to the 1830s. In his deft handling, the road is not simply an avenue for the travels (and often travails) of people, but an axis along which Kentucky settlers' economic hopes, cultural designs, and political aspirations took root, evolved, and matured. Friend's re-creation of the personal, economic, and cultural lives of these settlers along this small swath of the trans-Appalachian West is an extension and reflection of broader national themes that shaped the history and provide the contour for the historiography of the early republic.

As Euramericans migrated into frontier Kentucky, the ancient trail that would become the Maysville Road became an avenue of cultural and physical conflict. When pioneers encroached upon and then settled on Native American territories, ecological differences in the use of land and animals escalated into violent encounters such as the siege of Bryan's Station and the Battle of Blue Licks in 1782. As pioneers displaced Native Americans—often violently—the frontier population became multicultural and multiethnic. Welsh from New Jersey, Yankees from New England, poorer sorts of English background from the Mid-Atlantic and lower South, and African Americans from the Southeast mingled together. Although settlement was dispersed, Friend convincingly maintains that these early settlers were in fact creating a "village West" (43).

In the 1790s, gentry families began arriving in increasing numbers along the road. Determined to realize economic opportunities unleashed by the American Revolution, they were intent on taming both the natural landscape of northern Kentucky and the democratic ethos of the first settlers. Recently arrived republican gentlemen and gentlewomen reshaped frontier Kentucky vertically along the lines of social hierarchy and a presumed collective interest, which displaced and then replaced the individualistic pioneer culture. This new world was codified in the Kentucky constitution of 1792, which had the intent of binding the individual to the community and the effect of placing political power in the hands of the elite. Besides leaving their mark on the political landscape, these "Great Settlers" reshaped the countryside as well. Log houses replaced log cabins and were themselves replaced by brick homes. Imported glass windows provided views of neatly arranged ornamental gardens that flourished in the wilderness and squalid slave quarters behind the great houses. Conspicuous consumption—and its African American attendants—had arrived.

So too did merchants and artisans who catered to the needs of this frontier aristocracy. As these middling sorts began to populate the towns of Lexington, Paris, and smaller settlements along the Maysville Road, they consolidated their wealth and social and political position within their communities. As their market and financial ties expanded to the East, merchants' commitment to the community's welfare was eclipsed by credit obligations beyond their ability to control or mitigate. As the sense of community and mutual obligation deteriorated so too did the environment. Rapid population growth, increased agricultural production in clear-cut fields, and the introduction of large domestic animals that grazed on and ruined the indigenous savannah vegetation of the area strained and transformed the natural resources along the road.

The ascendancy of men of property and the concomitant erosion of the environment alienated some settlers who fled to areas beyond the reach of the powerful and to the limits of an unproductive soil. Others who remained behind found making a living more difficult, with many drifting into impoverished tenancy. Politically, economically, and socially disfranchised, the displaced and disposed found release in the Great Revival, which began at Cane Ridge in 1801. Revivalists shaped a critique of class-defined society and an economy characterized by conspicuous consumption and impersonal...