*Daniel Immerwahr* # Progressive Summary Uses a lot of cosmological metaphors - settlers going supernova, while Natives being compressed like a neutron star. At times, quite beautiful prose. # Definitions # Chapter Notes ## 1 - The Fall and Rise of Daniel Boone The 13 colonies of the United States declared their independence from Britain in 1776. ![[Screenshot 2025-09-28 at 3.41.45 PM.png]] (Source: https://www.worldatlas.com/geography/thirteen-colonies.html) The Appalachian mountains formed a natural boundary. For over a century, it had posed a barrier against British settlement. The British had made it a crime to cross this line. Daniel Boone was a legendary frontiersman who explored territory beyond this. Frontiersman like him were initially looked down upon by Washington and Jefferson, who didn't want the US government to be drawn into wars with the native Indians. Instead, they favoured controlled expansion. > By blazing his trail through the wilderness, Boone had opened a channel through which hundreds of thousands of whites would soon pour, dragging enslaved blacks along with them. Boone wasn’t exactly the “first white man of the West,” as one of his biographers insisted. But he was an early drop from a faucet that was about to be turned on full blast. Washington also had personal reasons to discourage the frontiersmen. > Much of Washington’s wealth lay in large tracts of western land. That land would hold its value only if he could control its sale and settlement. “Banditti” such as Boone, who took land without consulting its eastern owners, were a threat. Boone himself was a particular threat, since his claims on Kentucky conflicted with Washington’s own. The founders created a separate political category for the frontier: territory. > Rather than dividing the frontier among the states, the republic’s leaders brokered deals by which none of the Atlantic states would extend to the Mississippi, which marked the western edge of the country. Instead, western land would go to the federal government. It would be administered not as states, but as territories. The first territory to be ceded was in 1784 by Virginia, which gave up its claims to land north of the Ohio River. By 1791 all Atlantic states, except Georgia had given up their western claims. The Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which covered most of the present-day Midwest, stated that territories that had more than 5,000 free men could have a legislature, and those that had more than 60,000 free inhabitants could be states. Until territories became states, the federal government held absolute power over them. Territories were to be ruled by an appointed governor and three judges. James Monroe wrote that "In effect, it was a colonial government similar to that which prevailed in these States previous to the revolution." Jefferson admitted that it resembled a "despotic oligarchy". Jefferson said that the people of Louisiana were as "incapable of self-government as children" and that the "principles of popular Government are utterly beyond their comprehension." He sent the US army and by 1806 the Territory of Louisiana had the largest contingent of the army in the country. Louisiana's governor believed that allowing its people to vote "would be a dangerous experiment". Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana from the French was more about getting valuable ports on the Gulf of Mexico. It wasn't about getting land for white settlers. Jefferson and Washington wanted whites to settle the land "compactly", which meant they wouldn't require too much of it. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day (July 4, 1826) exactly 50 days after the Declaration of Independence. While their lives were celebrated, Boone's was not. He died in the same decade, with neither money nor land. ### Population bomb By mid-century, colonial settlers had "spread like bacteria", thanks to an explosive combination of native populations dying from disease, powerful agricultural technologies, and economic ties to rapidly-industrialising Britain. > The government gave up prosecuting squatters by the 1830s and instead let them buy their land. In the 1860s it began giving away parcels of public land as “homesteads” to nearly any citizen willing to live on them. > > The territories with large white populations became states swiftly; California, swarming with gold-seekers, went from military government to statehood in two years. > [A]fter 1848, new territories skipped the first stage of government, absolute rule by federal officials, and went straight to having bicameral legislatures. > The culture changed, too. Rather than being despised “banditti” or “white savages” on the fringes of civilization, settlers acquired a new identity: pioneers. No longer scofflaws, they were the proud flag-bearers of a dynamic nation. > > As squatters became pioneers, Daniel Boone’s reputation surged. After his death, he was retroactively claimed as an honorary founding father. A statue was placed on the steps of the Capitol in 1851: a frontiersman, bearing a conspicuous resemblance to Boone, fighting an Indian. It stood there for more than a century. In 1845, the phrase "manifest destiny" was used for the first time, by John L. O’Sullivan in the Democratic Review,, where he argued: “It is now time for the opposition to the annexation of Texas to cease… Why, were other reasoning wanting in favor of now incorporating Texas into the Union, it is the fulfillment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.” > A country that had started out resembling the British Empire, with centers of power in the East and subordinated territory in the West, had been turned by the population bomb into something different: a violently expansive empire of settlers, feeding on land and displacing everything in its path. ## 2 - Indian Country Native Americans were pushed west into Indian Country, designated in 1834. An area called the Western Territory was supposed to be given representation in Congress, but this was rejected. ![[image.png|557x409]] Eventually, they were driven into an even smaller area. ![[image-1.png|558x359]] ## 3 - Guano > All agricultural traditions, in order for them to last long enough to be traditions, require methods for managing nitrogen flows. These are intricate ballets between farmer and earth, choreographed by folk wisdom and danced to the rhythm of the seasons. ## 8 - White City # Quotes # References