Presidents Who Shaped the American West by Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain

Abstract

Reviewed by: Presidents Who Shaped the American West by Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain Katherine Joslin Presidents Who Shaped the American West. By Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2018. ix + 256 pp. Illustrations, conclusions, further reading, index. $24.95 paper. Through a series of engaging narratives, Presidents Who Shaped the American West sketches an expanding map of what we think of as the American West and tells the bigger story of how “the ephemeral West became a real place, authentic yet mysterious, and intriguing to people all over the world” (25). From the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, the West expanded through the Mississippi region and across the Great Plains to the Pacific Coast, and then to Hawaii and Alaska. The shape of the West, Glenda Riley and Richard W. Etulain argue, was forged by the federal government in the East under the guidance of US presidents Jefferson, Jackson, Polk, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, Eisenhower, Johnson, Carter, Reagan, and recently by the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, all of whom had some personal footing in the West. The book is encyclopedic in style, meant for general readers, and offers fresh perspectives on presidential curiosity about and commitment to the shape of the country as a whole. The authors weave large themes into the series of stories they tell about individual presidents. Policy was predicated on protecting borders, strengthening security, removing Native peoples, negotiating slavery, opening homestead lands to whites, managing migrations, providing transportation, conserving natural resources, and preserving natural beauty. Riley and Etulain pull together history that the reader may already know in part. Jefferson executed the Louisiana Purchase and sent the Lewis and Clark expedition—the “Corps of Discovery”—to explore it. Andrew Jackson led the Battle of New Orleans to secure the frontier and then orchestrated the “Trail of Tears” to free up land for plantations. The creation of the West moves in this way through the policies and prejudices of men in the White House. In 1862 Lincoln spearheaded the Homestead Act to expand farmland and the Morrill Act to build land-grant colleges across the country. Railroad tracks and telegraph lines linked East and West, even as the Civil War pitted North and South. It was Lincoln who signed the Yosemite Land Grant Act on June 30, 1864, and Theodore Roosevelt built his presidency on that same effort of the federal government to secure and control western lands—the Antiquities Act of 1906 gave him the power to shape the West by preserving lands. The New Deal policies of Franklin Roosevelt saved farms, protected landscapes, and rescued folks from poverty, all policies that strongly affected life in the West. Eisenhower followed with the expansion of federal roads across the Great Plains. In recent years, Obama used the Antiquities Act more than any other president. The political significance of the West has been most apparent in its expanding power over the federal government that had shaped it. This “cross-continental” collection offers a primer on the current presidency of Donald J. Trump, whose desire has [End Page 321] been to rescind policies and revoke the power of Washington, DC, over the lands of the West. Katherine Joslin Department of English Western Michigan University Copyright © 2019 Center for Great Plains Studies