Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/eam.2023.a904224
Amy Dunagin
abstract:This “Consider the Source” piece examines the origins of Patrick Henry’s well-known phrase “Give me liberty or give me death!” It suggests that Henry may have borrowed from one of the least elevated of literary contexts: a comedic musical interlude from the London stage. This potential connection both affirms the transatlantic nature of American revolutionary rhetoric and shows that the locus of this rhetorical exchange was socially broad, occurring across “low” as well as elite genres.
{"title":"Liberty or Death: Patrick Henry, Theatrical Song, and Transatlantic Patriot Politics","authors":"Amy Dunagin","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.a904224","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.a904224","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This “Consider the Source” piece examines the origins of Patrick Henry’s well-known phrase “Give me liberty or give me death!” It suggests that Henry may have borrowed from one of the least elevated of literary contexts: a comedic musical interlude from the London stage. This potential connection both affirms the transatlantic nature of American revolutionary rhetoric and shows that the locus of this rhetorical exchange was socially broad, occurring across “low” as well as elite genres.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"44 1","pages":"491 - 505"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82551701","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/eam.2023.a904220
Eric Toups
abstract:Understandings of gender underpinned every encounter between eighteenth-century Indigenous and colonial leaders. They met each other not just as warriors, traders, or diplomats but also as men. Keeping this in mind, this article examines diplomatic discourse between French colonial officials of Louisiana and Choctaw headmen to understand the underlying tensions in their long-standing alliance. This analysis sheds new light on critical decisions made by both the French and Choctaws about their military strategies and their commitments to defending each other. When one studies several flashpoints in their alliance during the Natchez and Chickasaw Wars, French and Choctaw understandings of masculinity and its entanglements with war, status, and alliance come into focus. Because the Choctaws held the upper hand in the relationship, they typically directed how the often-resentful French performed masculinity; frequently the French did so on Choctaw terms.
{"title":"Indian Men and French “Women”: Fragile Masculinity and Fragile Alliances in Colonial Louisiana, 1699–1741","authors":"Eric Toups","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.a904220","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.a904220","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:Understandings of gender underpinned every encounter between eighteenth-century Indigenous and colonial leaders. They met each other not just as warriors, traders, or diplomats but also as men. Keeping this in mind, this article examines diplomatic discourse between French colonial officials of Louisiana and Choctaw headmen to understand the underlying tensions in their long-standing alliance. This analysis sheds new light on critical decisions made by both the French and Choctaws about their military strategies and their commitments to defending each other. When one studies several flashpoints in their alliance during the Natchez and Chickasaw Wars, French and Choctaw understandings of masculinity and its entanglements with war, status, and alliance come into focus. Because the Choctaws held the upper hand in the relationship, they typically directed how the often-resentful French performed masculinity; frequently the French did so on Choctaw terms.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"234 1","pages":"353 - 379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88526179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/eam.2023.a904222
Tom Arne Midtrød
abstract:This article investigates the issue of ethnic cleansing against Native peoples in early America and the relationship between ethnic cleansing and genocide. It examines the efforts of colonial officials in New York and New Jersey to remove Native groups in the Hudson Valley region during the Seven Years’ War. In an atmosphere of suspicion and animosity, colonial authorities first sought to exert control over local Natives through surveillance and internment in colonial towns. Then, following an outburst of genocidal violence from ordinary colonials, they began to encourage the Natives to leave their homelands, first for refuge among the Mohawk allies of the British and then for Native settlements in the distant Susquehanna country. Cast as an effort at paternalistic protection of vulnerable Natives, the official effort at ethnic cleansing worked in tandem with indiscriminate violence from ordinary colonial, as officials both exploited and exaggerated the genocidal attitudes of the colonial population to encourage Native removal. Though colonial officials abandoned this ethnic cleansing program after the return of peace to the region in 1758, the evidence presented here shows that largely nonviolent efforts at removal or ethnic cleansing cannot easily be disentangled from the threat of genocide or extermination.
{"title":"“A People before Useless”: Ethnic Cleansing in the Wartime Hudson Valley, 1754–1763","authors":"Tom Arne Midtrød","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.a904222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.a904222","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This article investigates the issue of ethnic cleansing against Native peoples in early America and the relationship between ethnic cleansing and genocide. It examines the efforts of colonial officials in New York and New Jersey to remove Native groups in the Hudson Valley region during the Seven Years’ War. In an atmosphere of suspicion and animosity, colonial authorities first sought to exert control over local Natives through surveillance and internment in colonial towns. Then, following an outburst of genocidal violence from ordinary colonials, they began to encourage the Natives to leave their homelands, first for refuge among the Mohawk allies of the British and then for Native settlements in the distant Susquehanna country. Cast as an effort at paternalistic protection of vulnerable Natives, the official effort at ethnic cleansing worked in tandem with indiscriminate violence from ordinary colonial, as officials both exploited and exaggerated the genocidal attitudes of the colonial population to encourage Native removal. Though colonial officials abandoned this ethnic cleansing program after the return of peace to the region in 1758, the evidence presented here shows that largely nonviolent efforts at removal or ethnic cleansing cannot easily be disentangled from the threat of genocide or extermination.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"7 1","pages":"428 - 459"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80400319","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/eam.2023.a904223
Jacob F. Lee
abstract:This essay examines the planned invasion of New Orleans organized by the United States in late 1803 to enforce the terms of the Louisiana Purchase treaty. This story is a little-known but revealing moment in the history of the Louisiana Purchase and the early U.S. republic, and it demonstrates the varied levels of power and authority the United States depended on to implement its imperial projects. The federal system necessitated cooperation between the Jefferson administration and state governments in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, all of which were active partners in U.S. empire-building. West of the Appalachian Mountains, however, local conditions shaped the abilities of the states to fulfill Jefferson’s request for troops. By focusing on the intricacies of the federal system as the Jefferson administration attempted to accomplish a single goal of acquiring Louisiana in a narrow window of time, this essay highlights how crucial the contingencies of politics and power on the ground were to the federal system.
{"title":"“Do You Go to New Orleans?”: The Louisiana Purchase, Federalism, and the Contingencies of Empire in the Early U.S. Republic","authors":"Jacob F. Lee","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.a904223","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.a904223","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay examines the planned invasion of New Orleans organized by the United States in late 1803 to enforce the terms of the Louisiana Purchase treaty. This story is a little-known but revealing moment in the history of the Louisiana Purchase and the early U.S. republic, and it demonstrates the varied levels of power and authority the United States depended on to implement its imperial projects. The federal system necessitated cooperation between the Jefferson administration and state governments in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, all of which were active partners in U.S. empire-building. West of the Appalachian Mountains, however, local conditions shaped the abilities of the states to fulfill Jefferson’s request for troops. By focusing on the intricacies of the federal system as the Jefferson administration attempted to accomplish a single goal of acquiring Louisiana in a narrow window of time, this essay highlights how crucial the contingencies of politics and power on the ground were to the federal system.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"11 1","pages":"460 - 490"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"87234316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/eam.2023.a904221
D. Bottino, Hannah Peterson
abstract:This essay considers the 1738 conversion narrative of Patience Boston, a young Native woman executed for murder in York, Maine, in 1735. Titled A Faithful Narrative of the Wicked Life and Remarkable Conversion of Patience Boston, it contains Patience’s first-person account of her religious experiences while in York’s prison awaiting execution and was edited and published by York’s two ministers, Samuel Moody and his son Joseph. We analyze this text as a composite work of Patience Boston, Samuel Moody, and Joseph Moody, arguing that the evangelical piety of the two ministers resulted in the production of a conversion narrative that challenged colonial New England’s entrenched hierarchies of status in its confident proclamation of Patience’s heavenly salvation. We discuss Patience’s Narrative in comparison to earlier criminal narratives and analyze the role of New England’s Indian wars in shaping Samuel’s and Joseph’s desire to present Patience to the public as the model of a perfect Protestant Indian. We also consider the Narrative as an early exemplar of the piety of the Whitefieldian awakenings of the 1740s, arguing that this style of piety made it possible for Joseph to believe himself likely damned while simultaneously proclaiming Patience’s assured salvation.
{"title":"“I Hope I Have a Treasure in Heaven, Because My Heart Is There”: Salvation and Damnation in the Conversion Narrative of Patience Boston","authors":"D. Bottino, Hannah Peterson","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.a904221","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.a904221","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This essay considers the 1738 conversion narrative of Patience Boston, a young Native woman executed for murder in York, Maine, in 1735. Titled A Faithful Narrative of the Wicked Life and Remarkable Conversion of Patience Boston, it contains Patience’s first-person account of her religious experiences while in York’s prison awaiting execution and was edited and published by York’s two ministers, Samuel Moody and his son Joseph. We analyze this text as a composite work of Patience Boston, Samuel Moody, and Joseph Moody, arguing that the evangelical piety of the two ministers resulted in the production of a conversion narrative that challenged colonial New England’s entrenched hierarchies of status in its confident proclamation of Patience’s heavenly salvation. We discuss Patience’s Narrative in comparison to earlier criminal narratives and analyze the role of New England’s Indian wars in shaping Samuel’s and Joseph’s desire to present Patience to the public as the model of a perfect Protestant Indian. We also consider the Narrative as an early exemplar of the piety of the Whitefieldian awakenings of the 1740s, arguing that this style of piety made it possible for Joseph to believe himself likely damned while simultaneously proclaiming Patience’s assured salvation.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"26 1","pages":"380 - 427"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77498545","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:During the 1824 presidential election, the journalist and southern Jew Isaac Harby of Charleston made his case for Andrew Jackson. Writing under the pseudonym 'Junius,' Harby joined with other pro-Jackson forces and argued that the "Hero of New Orleans" would be the best man to succeed President James Monroe. Though some scholars have commented on the place of Jews within the early Jacksonian coalition, few have explained how and why American Jews united behind "Old Hickory." Harby's political activism mirrors the style and substance of other advocates for Jackson, especially those in the South, but Harby's identity as a southern Jew offers a distinctive case study within early Jacksonian Democratic politics. Although Harby's Jewish identity did not explicitly inform his argument in favor of Jackson, his experience as a southern Jew did influence his support. Harby's anxieties for the future of the American republic reinforced his political convictions. Despite his minority status, Harby shared the same fears and aspirations as his fellow non-Jewish citizens. In the process of supporting Andrew Jackson, Jews like Isaac Harby not only carved out their space in the rise of Jacksonian democracy, but also cooperated in its conception.
{"title":"Jews for Jackson: Isaac Harby, Southern Politics during the Election of 1824, and the Rise of Jacksonian Democracy","authors":"Daniel N. Gullotta","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.0005","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:During the 1824 presidential election, the journalist and southern Jew Isaac Harby of Charleston made his case for Andrew Jackson. Writing under the pseudonym 'Junius,' Harby joined with other pro-Jackson forces and argued that the \"Hero of New Orleans\" would be the best man to succeed President James Monroe. Though some scholars have commented on the place of Jews within the early Jacksonian coalition, few have explained how and why American Jews united behind \"Old Hickory.\" Harby's political activism mirrors the style and substance of other advocates for Jackson, especially those in the South, but Harby's identity as a southern Jew offers a distinctive case study within early Jacksonian Democratic politics. Although Harby's Jewish identity did not explicitly inform his argument in favor of Jackson, his experience as a southern Jew did influence his support. Harby's anxieties for the future of the American republic reinforced his political convictions. Despite his minority status, Harby shared the same fears and aspirations as his fellow non-Jewish citizens. In the process of supporting Andrew Jackson, Jews like Isaac Harby not only carved out their space in the rise of Jacksonian democracy, but also cooperated in its conception.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"64 1","pages":"303 - 325"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81118141","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article contributes to recent scholarship on early American money by exploring the role of print and the public sphere in making local paper currencies meaningful. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, elected assemblies and paper money advocates produced currencies, legislation, and discourse to incite belief in paper money and foster confidence in the fiscal promise that underpinned its value. With the spread of the press and the rise of counterfeiting, colonial governments and established printers turned monetary crime into a force of legitimation, distinguishing genuine monetary tokens from their fraudulent counterparts to authenticate "real" paper money. At a time when threats to the monetary system came less from counterfeiters than from political and economic factors, the authorities used the power of the press to legitimate paper as money and to demonstrate stewardship over the market relations paper money shaped. By the mid-eighteenth century, printers were putting variations of the phrase "To Counterfeit Is Death" on colonial currencies and detailing harsh punishments for counterfeiters in their newspapers, rendering colonial state power visible to abstract subjects. The political basis of paper money's value—the power of the purse—was in the process hidden from public view.
{"title":"To Counterfeit Is Death? Money, Print, and Punishment in the Early American Public Sphere","authors":"Katie A. Moore","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.0009","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article contributes to recent scholarship on early American money by exploring the role of print and the public sphere in making local paper currencies meaningful. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, elected assemblies and paper money advocates produced currencies, legislation, and discourse to incite belief in paper money and foster confidence in the fiscal promise that underpinned its value. With the spread of the press and the rise of counterfeiting, colonial governments and established printers turned monetary crime into a force of legitimation, distinguishing genuine monetary tokens from their fraudulent counterparts to authenticate \"real\" paper money. At a time when threats to the monetary system came less from counterfeiters than from political and economic factors, the authorities used the power of the press to legitimate paper as money and to demonstrate stewardship over the market relations paper money shaped. By the mid-eighteenth century, printers were putting variations of the phrase \"To Counterfeit Is Death\" on colonial currencies and detailing harsh punishments for counterfeiters in their newspapers, rendering colonial state power visible to abstract subjects. The political basis of paper money's value—the power of the purse—was in the process hidden from public view.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"41 2","pages":"233 - 271"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72412518","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:In the 1730s and 1740s, the Trustees of Georgia incorporated a variety of ethnic and religious groups into the colony in order to protect the borderland between the British and Spanish empires in North America. Historians have largely emphasized economic underdevelopment in explaining the decline of the early Georgia settlement, but the neglect of the Trustees in creating connections among these diverse groups remains an understudied factor in the colony's struggles. Georgia officials' improvisational approach to colony-building in the early eighteenth century demonstrates a failed experiment within the British imperial system, and ultimately it did not create a sustainable settlement. Scottish and Irish as well as German-speaking, Jewish, and other settlers increased British-allied presence on the frontier, but in many cases these groups remained linguistically and geographically siloed. A reading of the Trustees' plans and the correspondence of their representatives in the southeast demonstrates a lack of planning for coordinating and integrating these communities that paradoxically made the colony more fractured, and thus less secure and effective in defending against Spanish spies and military threats. The difficulties of populating this contested borderland proved too complex for the Trustees.
{"title":"Utopian Dreams and Untenable Realities: The Georgia Trustees' Failure to Stabilize the Frontier through Foreign Migration","authors":"Adrian Finucane","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.0007","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:In the 1730s and 1740s, the Trustees of Georgia incorporated a variety of ethnic and religious groups into the colony in order to protect the borderland between the British and Spanish empires in North America. Historians have largely emphasized economic underdevelopment in explaining the decline of the early Georgia settlement, but the neglect of the Trustees in creating connections among these diverse groups remains an understudied factor in the colony's struggles. Georgia officials' improvisational approach to colony-building in the early eighteenth century demonstrates a failed experiment within the British imperial system, and ultimately it did not create a sustainable settlement. Scottish and Irish as well as German-speaking, Jewish, and other settlers increased British-allied presence on the frontier, but in many cases these groups remained linguistically and geographically siloed. A reading of the Trustees' plans and the correspondence of their representatives in the southeast demonstrates a lack of planning for coordinating and integrating these communities that paradoxically made the colony more fractured, and thus less secure and effective in defending against Spanish spies and military threats. The difficulties of populating this contested borderland proved too complex for the Trustees.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"1 1","pages":"272 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"86057118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:The Wabanakis of northern New England were much more successful than their Algonquian peers in resisting the advance of settler colonialism into their homeland. This article argues that the key to that success was the birchbark canoe; a technology that gave Wabanakis a decisive military advantage during several conflicts with the British Empire. The incredibly light weight birchbark canoe allowed Wabanakis to portage around New England's many waterfalls and across the region's many river valleys with relative ease. Although Europeans admired the birchbark canoe, they failed to reproduce that technology for their own use. The article also explores how colonists such as Benjamin Church vainly attempted to adapt whaleboats in order to match the sophistication of indigenous nautical technology. This piece troubles the assumption of European technological superiority in their interactions with Native Americans. It also points to the importance of waterways and the nature of transportation in understanding how historical subjects conceived space and experienced encounters in colonial America.
{"title":"\"Canoes of Great Swiftness\": Rivercraft and War in the Northeast","authors":"Zachary M. Bennett","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.0008","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:The Wabanakis of northern New England were much more successful than their Algonquian peers in resisting the advance of settler colonialism into their homeland. This article argues that the key to that success was the birchbark canoe; a technology that gave Wabanakis a decisive military advantage during several conflicts with the British Empire. The incredibly light weight birchbark canoe allowed Wabanakis to portage around New England's many waterfalls and across the region's many river valleys with relative ease. Although Europeans admired the birchbark canoe, they failed to reproduce that technology for their own use. The article also explores how colonists such as Benjamin Church vainly attempted to adapt whaleboats in order to match the sophistication of indigenous nautical technology. This piece troubles the assumption of European technological superiority in their interactions with Native Americans. It also points to the importance of waterways and the nature of transportation in understanding how historical subjects conceived space and experienced encounters in colonial America.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"21 1","pages":"205 - 232"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83682956","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Abstract:This article historicizes an effort by South Texas businessmen in the late 1840s to secede from the State of Texas and to create a new federal territory to protect their landholdings between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Their pursuit centered on the trans-Nueces region, as the land between the two rivers was called, but it also tapped into broader political hostilities in the antebellum United States. In particular, the South Texans' territorial petition arrived in Congress as slavery's proponents and opponents fought bitterly over the institution's role in national life. Further, calls for a trans-Nueces territory represented a crisis for the United States and Texas in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican-American War. In effect, the South Texas separatists pitted both powers against each other, warning Congress that the Texas Legislature was on the verge of confiscating their lands and pleading with the federal government to step in. By simultaneously introducing the territory issue in Congress and agitating state lawmakers in Austin, the trans-Nueces entrepreneurs forced open a new path toward resolution that provoked the Texas government to act, eventually creating a commission that swiftly endorsed the men's land titles in the region. The territorial campaign was a borderlands response to the post-1848 land tenure arrangement that the businessmen saw as a threat to their economic power. Overall, the episode reveals the dimensions and lasting power of local negotiations in national histories.
{"title":"Texas or Territory? Borderlands Separatism and Postwar Politics in the Trans-Nueces, 1848–1850","authors":"Bobby Cervantes","doi":"10.1353/eam.2023.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/eam.2023.0006","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract:This article historicizes an effort by South Texas businessmen in the late 1840s to secede from the State of Texas and to create a new federal territory to protect their landholdings between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Their pursuit centered on the trans-Nueces region, as the land between the two rivers was called, but it also tapped into broader political hostilities in the antebellum United States. In particular, the South Texans' territorial petition arrived in Congress as slavery's proponents and opponents fought bitterly over the institution's role in national life. Further, calls for a trans-Nueces territory represented a crisis for the United States and Texas in the immediate aftermath of the Mexican-American War. In effect, the South Texas separatists pitted both powers against each other, warning Congress that the Texas Legislature was on the verge of confiscating their lands and pleading with the federal government to step in. By simultaneously introducing the territory issue in Congress and agitating state lawmakers in Austin, the trans-Nueces entrepreneurs forced open a new path toward resolution that provoked the Texas government to act, eventually creating a commission that swiftly endorsed the men's land titles in the region. The territorial campaign was a borderlands response to the post-1848 land tenure arrangement that the businessmen saw as a threat to their economic power. Overall, the episode reveals the dimensions and lasting power of local negotiations in national histories.","PeriodicalId":43255,"journal":{"name":"Early American Studies-An Interdisciplinary Journal","volume":"134 3-4 1","pages":"326 - 351"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77838347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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