The frontier looms large in the American imagination. In 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner, in an influential essay, wrote: The frontier is productive of individualism. The tendency is anti-social. It produces antipathy to control, and particularly to any direct control. The tax-gatherer is viewed as a representative of oppression. Andro Linklater, in his provocative new book, The Fabric of America, disagrees. Turner’s view, he writes, bears no relation to reality. What made the settlement of the West such an iconic American experience was precisely that it took place under the umbrella of the U.S. government. The first thing a person who claimed a particular piece of land wanted to do was to register its use and a claim to ownership first unofficially with others in the claim group, then officially with the government. From early on, the settlers were defined by boundaries. Linklater points out that the longest clause in the Articles of Confederation dealt with border disputes between states. Perhaps it was appropriate that young George Washington was a surveyor and land speculator.
At the heart of Linklater’s narrative is Andrew Ellicott (1754-1820), a gifted astronomer and surveyor who played a major role in determining the borders of no fewer than eleven states and the District of Columbia, as well as the southern and northern frontiers of the United States. Beyond Ellicott’s personal experiences, Linklater, author of the acclaimed Measuring America, explains how decisions concerning boundaries and property made a crucial impact on American history. When John Quincy Adams negotiated the Adams-Onis treaty with Spain in 1819, for example, his diplomacy had parlayed [Andrew] Jackson’s illegal raid into a massive acquisition of territory from Florida to Oregon, expanding the U.S. for the first time from coast to coast.
Linklater gives us a different perspective than we usually get when reading about how the U.S. developed. The frontier experience took place not only in wide open spaces, but within the borders of the United States. How that happened is an important story and Linklater tells it splendidly.
Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller and a frequent contributor to BookPage.
