The Ohio Frontier: An Anthology of Early Writings ed. by Emily Foster (review)

Reviews David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly. Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. 385 pp. ISBN: 08I39I7735 (cloth), $65.00. ISBN: 08I39I7743 (paper), $I9.50. Charles F. Bryan, Jr., director of the Virginia Historical Society (VHS), proclaims the United States is a "nation of movers," but historians David H. Fischer and James C. Kelly prove in their book, Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement, that it was Virginians who set the wheels of migration in motion. Initially what began as a catalog for a VHS exhibit celebrating the centenary of the Turner frontier thesis has blossomed into a concise attempt to follow the migration pattern of Virginians, from those who initially migrated from Europe to the old Dominion, to those who moved within the confines of the state, finally to those who left the Commonwealth for new opportunities out West. Using the history of Virginia's westward movement as a case study to test the frontier thesis, the historians find that it neither supports nor shatters Frederick Jackson Turner's theory on American social development. Following a global trend of migration that began' in the 1500s, English subjects came to the New World seeking either bettem.'l.ent or subsistence through the ownership of land. The promise of free land in Virginia did not automatically translate into the growth of an egalitarian and democratic republic, as Captain John Smith had envisioned. Instead, the adoption of the headright system fostered a socially stratified environment in which a small class of cavaliers dominated the masses of indentured servants in the colony. The leader of this closed homogeneous society . was Sir William Berkeley, who endowed his political allies with choice land in the Tidewater region. Turner's belief that free land promoted individualism and freedom did not become a reality in Virginia until the late I600s, when Virginia literally began to open up as elite planters and yeomen farmers alike not only pushed the state's domain past the fall line but also acknowledged the incorporation of various religious and ethnic groups, such as Huguenots, Quakers, Germans, Scotch-Irish, and African slaves. The growth of a multicultural society in the Old Dominion was permissible because English migrants carried the seed of toleration with them to the New World. Over time, the new environment in Virginia itself nourished this seed of acceptance and allowed for the ideology of American freedom to take root. By I776, Virginians no longer identified themselves as what they once were, British subjects, but as what they were destined to become, American citizens. No matter where these people moved, initially into the Deep South and then into the Middle West and finally past the Mississippi River, their"cultural baggage" always defined Spring 200I them easily as Virginians. In the manner one spoke English, in the way one constructed a home, and in the pursuit to be an honorable gentleman, a Virginian was always a Virginian. The concept of freedom and diversity allowed Virginians to cling to their comfortable old lifestyles and adapt them to their new surroundings. Although Virginians moved into new areas, they did not necessarily forget their roots and become"Americanized" overnight, as Turner assmned. The consequence of this great mass exodus was profound not only for Virginia, but also for the nation. Members of the Commonwealth's elite and yeomen citizenry both began to leave the state by 1770 and Virginians searched internally to identify the problem, blaming agricultural practices ~nd slavery. Some Virginians voted with their feet, concluding that nothing could be done to remedy the problems that plagued the Old Dominion. Although the peculiar institution was declining in the Commonwealth, the cancer expanded to the frontier as part of Virginians' westward movement, and there it festered until I860. When Virginia chose to side with the Confederate States, the Commonwealth had regressed into a backward position, lacking ethnic diversity, urbanization, and industrialization. Fischer and Kelly incorporated most of the traditional secondary sources relating to the state's history, but more important, they rely on the cultural landscape to tell the story of cultural persistence and cultural pluralism on the frontier. This book provides an excellent general study of...