"FROM FRONTIER TO PLANTATION IN TENNESSEE" is the classic book by UVa professor of history Thomas Perkins Abernethy about the formative years of Tennessee and its early political leadership. Now republished in a quality paperback without underlines and distracting stray marks NOTE: only in the "Quid Pro Books" edition, showing the colorful cover], it has been Digitally Remastered to restore missing parts of words, cleaner text, and more consistently legible footnotes. Abernethy studied a time when Tennessee was the original Wild West and a laboratory for U.S. expansion and repopulation-the first new state born out of a territory. Answering the idealized histories that had uncritically praised the democracticizing effects of the Frontier in American history, Abernethy discusses such leaders as William Blount, Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and William Carroll (the latter two seen as more the proponents of democracy than was Jackson, who by this time was a wealthy landowner, not the common man). Legends like Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett, and scores of land squatters and magnates, figure colorfully into the account. It was the political elites and land grabbers who ruled Tennessee from the time of the Revolution to the Civil War, not the pioneers, trappers, and farmers. Even Representative David Crockett's efforts to secure land for the common man led to a breach with Andrew Jackson, and he was largely run out of town to the Alamo. Jackson is less a hero than a human, especially when compared to his image in adoring biographies that existed at the time of this book and since: "The Arch-democrat-to-be was quite willing to make others pay for his mistakes." The book's current relevance extends even to regions other than Tennessee and the early U.S. South, as the author captures a pattern of settlement-and the momentum from territory to statehood-that has informed much research into, and curiosity about, other frontiers in transition. Part of the "History and Heroes" Series by Quid Pro Books, an independent academic press.

"[B]rings the Commonwealth [of Kentucky] to life."-cover.

The first thirty years under the Federal Constitution encompass the most obscure period of Southern history. Thomas P. Abernethy brings this turbulent era into full focus for the first time in this book, Volume IV of A History of the South. With Spain in possession of Florida and Louisiana, claiming and partially occupying everything west of the Alleghenies and south of the Tennessee River, and with England and France attempting to exploit Spain's weakness to strengthen their own positions in the New World, the Southern frontier was beset by active or potential enemies during most of the three decades under consideration. Thus the protection of our Southern and Western borders is one of the main themes of this volume.The South, of course, was not all frontier country, and the history of the well-established civilization of the South Atlantic states has not been neglected. Among the significant political and social developments which the author has reviewed at length are the transition form Washingtonian Federalism to Jeffersonian Republicanism; the unprecedented vast speculation in Western lands and their political repercussions; the separatist intrigues in the early West; such episodes of the Jefferson administration as the Louisiana Purchase, the Burr Conspiracy and the Embargo; and the events leading up to the War of 1812 and the Southern phase of the conflict.The product of many years of sustained effort on the part of a major Southern historian, The South in the New Nation adds significantly to our knowledge of American history.

The Allegheny frontier, comprising the mountainous area of present-day West Virginia and bordering states, is studied here in a broad context of frontier history and national development. The region was significant in the great American westward movement, but Otis K. Rice seeks also to call attention to the impact of the frontier experience upon the later history of the Allegheny Highlands. He sees a relationship between its prolonged frontier experience and the problems of Appalachia in the twentieth century. Through an intensive study of the social, economic, and political developments in pioneer West Virginia, Rice shows that during the period 1730–1830 some of the most significant features of West Virginia life and thought were established. There also appeared evidences of arrested development, which contrasted sharply with the expansiveness, ebullience, and optimism commonly associated with the American frontier. In this period customs, manners, and folkways associated with the conquest of the wilderness to root and became characteristic of the mountainous region well into the twentieth century. During this pioneer period, problems also took root that continue to be associated with the region, such as poverty, poor infrastructure, lack of economic development, and problematic education. Since the West Virginia frontier played an important role in the westward thrust of migration through the Alleghenies, Rice also provides some account of the role of West Virginia in the French and Indian War, eighteenth-century land speculations, the Revolutionary War, and national events after the establishment of the federal government in 1789.