This Virginia History Blog recaps five titles on the Founders, merchants and backcountry Virginia. “American Creation” is a top-down political survey of Revolution and Constitution eras. “George Mason, Forgotten Founder” is a biography of the Virginian Founder.
“Buying into the World of Goods” explains the development of a marketing economy in Bedford and Franklin County backcountry Piedmont in the Revolutionary and Constitutional eras, and “Along the Maysville Road” explores the commercial development of Kentucky as a Virginia County then as Kentucky through the Constitutional period. “Virginia’s Western Visions” explains the narrowing conception of “truly Virginian” from colonial to New Nation era.
American Creation
Joseph J. Ellis wrote American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic in 2007. It is available from Vintage Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
In this explicitly “top down” history of the Revolution and Constitutional eras of American history, Ellis argues that the founders were able to do much very well. Accomplishments sprung from inspiration in the Enlightenment’s liberalism and rationality, enabled by the geographic isolation of a continent removed from European entanglements.
The white male elites of the thirteen British North American colonies were in fact diverse, a mix of values, interests, self sufficient talents and independent personalities that required improvisation. They opted for a gradual, sustainable revolution and an improved, pragmatic nation in the Constitution. Yet they stumbled over the intractable issues of race related to slavery and indigenous tribes.
To buy the “American Creation” on Amazon, click here.
*Peter C. Messer wrote Stories of Independence: Identity, Ideology, and History in Eighteenth-Century America in 2005. It is out of print, but available online new and used.. To buy the “Stories of Independence” on Amazon, click here. https://amzn.to/2GGI1Ib
George Mason
Jeff Broadwater wrote George Mason: Forgotten Founder in 2006. It is available from the North Carolina University Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
George Mason actively participated in Constitutional Convention debates, but refused to sign on the grounds of its lacking a Bill of Rights. His Anti-Federalist stance at the time of ratification has led to a certain obscurity that Broadwater seeks to remedy. There is more to Mason than western land speculation, southern interests in navigation laws and positions on slavery.
Mason was also an effective nationalist, influential in the colonial resistance to Britain, authoring the Fairfax Resolves. He authored Virginia’s Constitution preamble, Virginia’s Declaration of Rights. At Philadelphia, he voted for Madison’s Virginia plan along with its “supreme” national departments, yet as a delegate from the largest state, helped broker the Great (Connecticut) Compromise, converting the small states to enthusiastic supporters of the Constitutional Union.
To buy the “George Mason” on Amazon, click here.
Buying into the World of Goods
Ann Smart Martin wrote Buying into the World of Goods: Early Consumers in Backcountry Virginia in 2008. It is available from the Johns Hopkins University Press, on Kindle and online new and used.
Martin uses economic, social and cultural history to describe the economic ventures of the Scottish native John Hook as a planter and backcountry merchant between 1760 and 1810 in Bedford and Franklin Counties, Virginia. Store clientele included white men and women but also slaves who paid in exchange for labor. Somehow the accused Tory escaped tar and feathering.
Shoppers sought a wide variety of goods, including essentials, luxuries and treats, and sometimes shopped just for the society of it. The distribution chain that Hook forged linked his neighbors to the larger Atlantic world. The goods extended from ribbons to books to household furnishings. Most sales were mundane items, Hook sold more rum than anything, followed by buttons and textiles. The text is supplemented by maps and photographs.
To buy the “Buying into the World of Goods” on Amazon, click here.
Along the Maysville Road
Craig Thompson Friend wrote Along the Maysville Road: The Early American Republic in the Trans-Appalachian West in 2005 and reprinted in 2017. It is available from the University of Tennessee Press and online new and used.
Beginning as a buffalo trace east-west sixty miles from the banks of the Ohio River to Lexington in the southern Ohio Valley, the Maysville Road became a “nascent urban corridor”. Settlement came in three waves, frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone, “Great Settlers” of plantations from Virginia, and “the men of commerce” who found an advocate in Henry Clay.
In the formative years of the early American Republic, this one-time county of Virginia became a stage where fundamental issues of democracy, evangelicalism, slavery, nationalism, capitalism and class conflict were all at play. Friend weaves a social history of culture, class, race, environment and the rise of the market economy.
To buy the “Along the Maysville Road” on Amazon, click here.
Virginia’s Western Visions
Scott Philyaw wrote Virginia’s Western Visions: Political and Cultural Expansion on an Early American Frontier in 2004. It is available from University of Tennessee Press and online new and used.
Philyaw investigates the Virginia backcountry from the colonial era through the 1830s. Early Virginia leaders seeking to enhance their cultural authority by claiming lands westerly to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers were supplanted by a post-Revolutionary generation that revised that western vision to a more restrictive and exclusionary one essentially limited to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Initially the colonial leadership established Tidewater institutions and representation that enabled expansion and minimized the backcountry turmoil experienced in other seaboard colonies such as North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Then the leadership of Virginians such as John Randolph and Nathaniel Beverley Tucker emphasized a smaller Virginia, characterized by customs and habits of those east of the Blue Ridge were the components of a “true Virginia identity”. By the time of the Civil War, even the closely held Appalachian territory chose to secede from Virginia.
To buy the “Virginia’s Western Visions” on Amazon, click here.
Additional history related to Virginia during this time period can be found at the Table of Contents of TheVirginiaHistorian website on the page for Revolution, Constitution and New Nation Era 1750-1824. Titles are organized by topics, political and economic Virginia, social history, gender, religious, African American, and Wars in Virginia 1750-1824.
General surveys of Virginia History can be found at Virginia History Surveys. Other Virginia history divided by topics and time periods can be found at the webpage Books and Reviews.
Note: Insights for these reviews include those available from articles in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of the Civil War Era, the Journal of Southern History and the Journal of American History.