Bound Away: Virginia and the Westward Movement

Abstract

Bound Away: Virginia and Westward Movement. By David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Pp. xvi, 366. Illustrations, maps. Cloth, $65.00; paper, $19.50.) Virginia suffered a curious fate amongst original thirteen states. The first successful English colony-and throughout colonial era crown's largest and most populous New World possession-understandably took a leadership role during Revolution. The Virginia dynasty guided young republic through thirty-two of its first thirty-six years. But even as others complained about this seeming lock on presidency, Old Dominion already had begun to decline. Soon Virginia led nation in only one area: number of its people who moved away. This migration, argue coauthors David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly, explains not only much of Virginia's history, but of nation's history as well. Appropriately, Virginia of this study is far larger than present state. In addition to large area once claimed and administered by Old Dominion (West Virginia, Kentucky, and other parts of Ohio Valley), authors also examine African and European migration to Chesapeake, movement within province, and great outpouring of black and white Virginians across continent after Revolution. Fischer and Kelly have organized their study of this westward movement as an in-depth examination of Frederick Jackson Turner's wellknown frontier thesis. They argue that Turner did ask right question and sometimes offered correct answer, but only in certain areas and not always for right reasons. Fischer and Kelly also reject more recent interpretations of new western historians. In authors' words, frontier was not, in fashionable sense, a `zone of interaction' between cultures but a place where one culture rapidly established a hegemony which persists to this day (xvi). The first two chapters-approximately one third of text-are devoted to migration to and within Old Dominion. The authors examine migration streams from various regions of British Isles, northwestern Europe, West Africa, and from other colonies. Within Virginia, each of these streams influenced others, and together they formed components of a common Virginian identity. Despite regional differences in speech, folkways, religion, and agriculture, all Virginians shared a social and political identity tied to colony's Tidewater elite. Each region also embraced ideal of personal freedom-not necessarily democracy associated with Turner's frontier, but the hegemonic freedom of cavaliers, who believed that people of different ranks possessed different liberties and that some possessed no liberty at all(134). By studying Virginia as a source region for westward movement, authors underscore impact of outmigration on region that migrants left behind. The state's rate of population growth waned, especially in comparison to other states. The new western states did not become closely allied sister republics that Thomas Jefferson had envisioned. …