Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775-1850 (review)

J U L Y 2 0 0 9 229 work that women from that state were particularly helpful as financial contributors to the projects of the Virginia LMAs. A full-scale study of the LMAs in Alabama as well as other states is beyond the scope of what Janney sets out to do here, but there is clearly more to be learned about these organizations across the region. Janney’s book is an elegant, informative study that restores these forgotten women to postwar southern history and successfully challenges important scholarly arguments. It should also inspire more work on this interesting subject. AMY FEELY MORSMAN Middlebury College Trans-Appalachian Frontier: People, Societies, and Institutions, 1775–1850. By Malcolm J. Rohrbough. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. xiv, 675 pp. $75.00 (cloth). ISBN 978-0-253-34932-3. $27.95 (paper). ISBN 978-0-253-21932-9. Malcolm J. Rohrbough’s Trans-Appalachian Frontier is an expanded, third edition of a volume originally published in 1978. It traces the Euro-American development of the trans-Appalachian West through a comparative analysis of people’s experiences, emergent societies, and fundamental institutions. While Rohrbough notes that people are at the center of this story, so, too, is the land. Trans-Appalachian Frontier is organized into six parts that examine migrations and frontiers, and concludes with an assessment of the western country’s role in the context of national development. Across the frontiers, several common goals are discernible among the pioneering class: the struggle for security, stability, and institutional structures. The frontiers tended to be as much rural and agricultural in nature as they were youthful and family-oriented. On the other hand, the tendency toward self-interest and a sense of fatalism among Euro-Americans colored Native-white relations and perpetuated racism, as evidenced by subsequent Indian removal campaigns and the discovery that “slavery turned out to be entirely compatible” with the frontier economy and society (p. 10). Although the Kentucky and Tennessee frontiers were already coming alive in the 1780s, the blueprint for western settlement was found in the ordinances of 1785 and 1787. Together, these facilitated westward expansion of the American empire in terms of land disposal, education T H E A L A B A M A R E V I E W 230 (by reserving sections for schools), limiting slavery (Article VI), and matters of governance. Rohrbough is particularly good at demonstrating the vitality of county-level governments, upon which the settlers were dependent for authority to establish such basic improvements as roads, ferries, licensing, and most economic activities. Given the immediacy of county governments, Anglo-American male settlers had remarkable access to local politics—and they used it. The contested nature of westward expansion was initially most keenly felt in the Old Northwest. Arthur St. Clair, the Northwest Territory’s first governor, observed in 1788 that concerning Native Americans, “Our pretensions to the country they inhabit has been made known to them in so unequivocal a manner . . . there is little probability of there ever being any cordiality between us” (p. 91). Indeed a series of destabilizing wars ensued, culminating in General Anthony Wayne’s victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers and the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. These substantially alleviated the Indian threat on both sides of the Ohio River, such that in 1803 Ohio was able to attain statehood. Rohrbough notes that south of the Ohio the federal government generally pursued more accommodating relations with Native Americans, at least until Andrew Jackson’s victory at Horseshoe Bend in 1814. Some two decades later, President Jackson instigated their sweeping removal to west of the Mississippi. Slavery was another contested issue. While Article VI condemned slavery north of the Ohio, it nevertheless provoked heated debates as statehood loomed for Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The region south of the Ohio experienced the expansion of slavery and the rise of the cotton kingdom. A commercial-oriented agrarianism linked the transAppalachian frontiers, yet distinctly different societies, with different interests , were emerging. Continued trans-Appalachian development came by way of land and territorial acquisitions and two great migrations occurring in 1815–1830 and 1830–1850. Migrants of the first wave favored destinations like Boon...