New in paperback
WILLIAM BARTRAM AND THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION ON THE
SOUTHERN FRONTIER
Edward J. Cashin
“Brilliant in conception, exhaustive in research from archives and fieldwork, this
book introduces a new genre of historical writing. It is thus far the most definitive
work on the southern Indian frontier during the Revolutionary era.”—Choice
In Travels, the celebrated 1791 account of the “Old Southwest,” William Bartram
recorded the natural world he saw around him but, rather incredibly, omitted any
reference to the epochal events of the American Revolution. Edward J. Cashin
places Bartram in the context of his times and explains his conspicuous avoidance of
people, places, and events embroiled in revolutionary fervor.
Cashin suggests that while Bartram documented the natural world for plant collector John Fothergill, he wrote Travels for an entirely different audience. Convinced
that Providence directed events for the betterment of mankind and that the Constitutional Convention would produce a political model for the rest of the world, Bartram offered Travels as a means of shaping the new country. Cashin illuminates the
convictions that motivated Bartram—that if Americans lived in communion with
nature, heeded the moral law, and treated the people of the interior with respect,
then America would be blessed with greatness.
In addition Cashin offers a detailed portrait of the often overlooked southern frontier on the eve of the Revolutionary War, revealing it to have been a coherent entity
united by an uneasy coexistence of Native Americans and British colonials.
A native of Augusta, Georgia, Edward
J. Cashin is director of the Center for
the Study of Georgia History at Augusta State University and the author
of fourteen books.
January 2007, 336 pages, 18 illus.
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