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prone to sharing. ( 36) More often, however,the author provides his reader with tidbits of information that have no clear link to an argument,such as when he dispells the myth of Boone's teetotalism by noting that he once purchased two quarts of rum 40), or that the grandfather of Abraham Lincoln may have been in the party"that blazed the trail to Boonesborough in 1779. ( 109) The tendency to offer anecdotes and information without an interpretive framework becomes most serious when the author writes long narratives of significant events, such as the kidnapping and subsequent return of a slave in 1782 (119), or Boone' s own capture and escape from the Shawnee in 1798. ( chapter 7) These stories give Lofaro an opportunity to engage the slavery issue,or to discuss Native American cultural clashes with EuroAmerican intruders, especially over use and misuse of the land. Other stories about Boone' s wife or daughter also ought to raise questions about women and gender. In most of the cases, however,the author leaves to the reader the work of identifying the significance of events described in the book, but without the complete evidence available to the author. The persistent reader will find some rewards in the final four chapters in which Lofaro interprets Boone' s life as Turnerian tragedy. The author argues that Boone's great knowledge of the frontier and his skill in cutting new trails,founding new towns, and brokering treaties with local Native Americans was matched by the frontiersman' s own mistakes in surveying and his ineptitude in the courtroom. Eventually,the land for which he invested so much of his life was wrenched away from him through lawsuits. This irony is worth the wait, but the theme could be made much more explicit earlier in the book, perhaps foreshadowing the contrast with Boone' s success in forest skills as a young man compared with his failure in formal education. chapter 1) There are also problems with Lofaro' s poorly conceived method of citing evidence. Endnotes are referenced only by the first phrase of the sentence rather than by a superscript number,requiring a great deal of effort on the part of a reader to track down quotations and sources of other information. The bibliography, in contrast, is organized and expansive, and in combination with the engaging prose makes this volume valuable for historians of Kentucky and the TransAppalachian frontien Because of the lack of an argument,however,Daniel Boone:An American Life should be read in conjunction with other histories of the Kentucky frontier in order to better understand the period, the place and the man. Corey Smith Wartburg College Lowell H. Harrison. Tbe AntiSlavery Movement in Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1978; reprint 2004. 138 pp. ISBN: 0813190835 (paper), 16.00. Harold D. Tallant. Evil Necessity:Slavery and Political Culture in Antebellum Kentucky . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky ,2003. 307 pp. ISBN: 081312252x cloth), $ 45.00. ecently, historians have explored how white and black southerners understood the contradictory confiuence of property and personhood embodied in chattel slaves.1 This literature reveals that while slaves resisted their status as property,for white southerners,negotiating the personhood of slaves occurred in a context in which slavery was accepted as a natural, positive good. Two books reviewed here remind us that, although whites in the Lower South may have been in agreement about the slavery' s virtues,Kentuckians debated whether slavery should exist at all. Lowell Harrison' s Tbe Antislavery Movement in 84 OHIO VALLEY HISTORY BOOK REVIEWS Kentucky and Harold D. Tallant' s Evil Necessity:Slavery asid Political Culture in Antebelittill Kentucky thoroughly analyze Kentucky' s antislavery movements and the reasons behind their ultimate failures. Both authors agree that, throughout the antebellum era, Kentucky had a vibrant,and at times violent culture of dissent over slavery. Directed at a broad audience,Harrison provides a concise narrative of Kentucky antislavery niovemetits,which celebrates the tenacity and spirit of the ill() vement 's proponents. Tallant argues Horold D. Tollant in Antebellum Kent' 0; 1, „ * W that, after 1820,many white Kentucki, ins, unlike their Lower South counterparts,depicted slavery as a necessary evil rather than a positive good...

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