Native Americans And The Early Republic

At the 1795 treaty council that sealed Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio, the Wyandot leader Tarhe spoke for the assembled Native leaders when he admonished the American emissaries: "Take care of your little ones; an impartial father equally regards all his children." Spoken two decades after the minutemen's shots had echoed across Lexington Green, Tarhe's words compel historians to reconsider the rosy truisms that customarily encircle the age of the Early Republic. The essays in this volume begin to perform this important reexamination of the Native American experience in the post-Revolutionary period. Tarhe's eloquent words and similar evidence quoted by the volume's contributors show that American Indians were not defeated refugees who dutifully stood aside in the wake of the British defeat, nor were they passive victims of American expansion. The book's three parts reflect the dynamic nature of the Native Americans' struggle: the first provides broad discussions of the interaction between Native Americans and the United States in the postwar era; the second traces histories of specific tribal communities; and the third explores the powerful repertoire of stories and pictures that Americans used to describe Native Americans to themselves during an era of national expansion. These essays open up for consideration a more complex history of the Early Republic. ContributorsColin G. Calloway, Dartmouth CollegeR. David Edmunds, University of Texas at DallasVivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt UniversityReginald Horsman, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeElise Marienstras, University of ParisJoel W. Martin, Franklin and Marshall CollegeJames H. Merrell, Vassar CollegeTheda Perdue, University of North CarolinaDaniel K. Richter, Dickinson CollegeDaniel H. Usner Jr., Cornell UniversityRichard White, Stanford University

By 1840, American politics was a paradox—unprecedented freedom and equality for men of European descent, and the simultaneous isolation and degradation of people of African and Native American descent. Historians have characterized this phenomenon as the "white republic." Race and the Early Republic offers a rich account of how this paradox evolved, beginning with the fledgling nation of the 1770s and running through the antebellum years. The essays in the volume, written by a wide array of scholars, are arranged so as to allow a clear understanding of how and why white political supremacy came to be in the early United States. Race and the Early Republic is a collection of diverse, insightful and interrelated essays that promote an easy understanding of why and how people of color were systematically excluded from the early U.S. republic.

In a compilation of essays, Early Republic: People and Perspectives explores the varied experiences of many different groups of Americans across racial, gender, religious, and regional lines in the early years of the country. Written by expert contributors drawing on extensive new research, Early Republic: People and Perspectives ranges across the broad spectrum of society to explore the everyday lives of Americans from the birth of the nation to the beginning of Jacksonian Age (roughly 1830). In a series of chapters, Early Republic provides vivid portraits of the farmers, entrepreneurs, laborers, women, Native Americans, and slaves who made up the population of the United States in its infancy. Key events, such as the two-party political system, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and the expansion into the Ohio Valley, are seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens who helped make them happen, in turn, making the United States what it is today.

Reflecting the best recent scholarship of Early America and the Early Republic, the articles in this collection study the many dimensions of American political history. The authors explore Native American interests and encounters with settlers, diplomatic endeavors, environmental issues, legal debates and practiced law, women's citizenship and rights, servitude and slavery and popular political activity. The geographical perspective is as expansive as the topical, with strong representation of trans-Atlantic and continental interests of many nations and peoples. The international and interdisciplinary perspectives illustrate the dynamic transformations of America during this era of settlement, conquest, development, revolution and nation building.

George Washington had contact with Native Americans throughout most of his life. His first encounter as a teenager left him with the impression that they were nothing more than an "ignorant people." As a young man he fought both alongside and against Native Americans during the French and Indian War and gained a grudging respect for their fighting abilities. During the American Revolution, Washington made it clear that he welcomed Indian allies as friends but would do his utmost to crush Indian enemies. As president, he sought to implement a program to "civilize" Native Americans by teaching them methods of agriculture and providing the implements of husbandry that would enable them to become proficient farmers--the only way, he believed, Native Americans would survive in a white-dominated society. Yet he discovered that his government could not protect Indian lands as guaranteed in countless treaties, and the hunger for Indian land by white settlers was so rapacious that it could not be controlled by an inadequate federal military establishment. While Washington appeared to admit the failure of the program, this book--a unique and necessary exploration of Washington's experience with and thoughts on Native Americans--contends he deserves credit for his continued efforts to implement a policy based on the just treatment of America's indigenous peoples. Distributed for George Mason University Press

Penned by leading historians, the specially-commissioned essays of Whither the Early Republic represent the most stimulating and innovative work being done on imperialism, environmental history, slavery, economic history, politics, and culture in the early Republic. The past fifteen years have seen a dramatic expansion in the scope of scholarship on the history of the early American republic. Whither the Early Republic consists of innovative essays on all aspects of the culture and society of this period, including Indians and empire, the economy and the environment, slavery and culture, and gender and urban life. Penned by leading historians, the essays are arranged thematically to reflect areas of change and growth in the field. Throughout the book, preeminent scholars act as guides for students to their areas of expertise. Contributors include Pulitzer Prize-winner Alan Taylor, Bancroft Prize-winner James Brooks, Christopher Clark, Ted Steinberg, Walter Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, David Waldstreicher, and more. These essays, all originally commissioned to appear in a special issue of the Journal of the Early Republic, explore a diverse array of subjects: the struggles for control of North America; the economic culture of the early Republic; the interactions of humans with plants, climate, animals, and germs; the commodification of people; and the complex intersections of politics and culture. Whither the Early Republic offers a wealth of tools for introducing a new generation of historians to the nature of the field and also to the wide array of possibilities that lie in the future for scholars of this fascinating period.

Winner of the 2021 Bancroft Prize and the 2021 Ridenhour Book Prize Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Nonfiction Named a Top Ten Best Book of 2020 by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly and a New York Times Critics' Top Book of 2020 A masterful and unsettling history of “Indian Removal,” the forced migration of Native Americans across the Mississippi River in the 1830s and the state-sponsored theft of their lands. In May 1830, the United States launched an unprecedented campaign to expel 80,000 Native Americans from their eastern homelands to territories west of the Mississippi River. In a firestorm of fraud and violence, thousands of Native Americans lost their lives, and thousands more lost their farms and possessions. The operation soon devolved into an unofficial policy of extermination, enabled by US officials, southern planters, and northern speculators. Hailed for its searing insight, Unworthy Republic transforms our understanding of this pivotal period in American history.

"An authoritative, sweeping, and fresh new biography of the nation's first president, Colin G. Calloway's book reveals fully the dimensions and depths of George Washington's relations with the First Americans."--Provided by publisher.