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Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward
movement. After the Turner thesis which celebrated the
frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy,
and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who
dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for
conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James
C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject. They share
with Turner the idea of the westward movement as a creative
process of high importance in American history, but they
understand it in a different way.
Where Turner studied the westward movement in terms of
its destination, Fischer and Kelly approach it in terms of
its origins. Virginia's long history enables them to provide
a rich portrait of migration and expansion as a dynamic
process that preserved strong cultural continuities. They
suggest that the oxymoron "bound away" ---from the folksong
Shenandoah--captures a vital truth about American history.
As people moved west, they built new societies from old
materials, in a double-acting process that made America what
is today.
Based on an acclaimed exhibition at the Virginia
Historical society, the book studies three stages of
migration to, within, and from Virginia. Each stage has its
own story to tell. All of them together offer an opportunity
to study the westward movement through three centuries, as
it has rarely been studied before.
Fischer and Kelly believe that the westward movement was
a broad cultural process, which is best understood not only
through the writings of intellectual elites, but also
through the physical artifacts and folkways of ordinary
people. The wealth of anecdotes and illustrations in this
volume offer a new way of looking at John Smith and William
Byrd, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone,
Dred Scott, and scores of lesser known gentry, yeomen,
servants, and slaves who were all "bound away" to an old new
world.
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"Intellectually provocative and visually appealing . . .
. This is public history of a very high order."
Elizabeth A. Peerkins in Journal of
Southern History
"An exciting and valuable book . . . . a must for all
interested in the history of Virginia and in the expansion
of the American frontier."
Carol S. Ebel in Georgia Historical
Quarterly
"A commendable effort to depict early African Americans
as historical actors in their own right."
Charles Hopkins in Richmond Free
Press
"Better than any other piece of writing known to this
reviewer, this long essay succeeds in showing the magnitude
and special character of Virginia's contribution to the
settlement of the west . . . . A major contribution not just
to Virginia history but to the larger colonial and national
history."
Jack Greene in Virginia Historical
Magazine
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