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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 975.502
EAN num: 9780813917740
ISBN number: 0813917743
Label: University of Virginia Press
Manufacturer: University of Virginia Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 366
Printing Date: 2000-03
Publishing house: University of Virginia Press
Sale Popularity Level: 57166
Studio: University of Virginia Press
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Bound Away offers a new understanding of the westward movement. After the Turner thesis which celebrated the frontier as the source of American freedom and democracy, and the iconoclasm of the new western historians who dismissed the idea of the frontier as merely a mask for conquest and exploitation, David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelly take a third approach to the subject. They share with Turner the idea of the westward movement as a creative process of high importance in American history, but they understand it in a different way.
Where Turner studied the westward movement in terms of its destination, Fischer and Kelly approach it in terms of its origins. Virginia's long history enables them to provide a rich portrait of migration and expansion as a dynamic process that preserved strong cultural continuities. They suggest that the oxymoron 'bound away' ---from the folksong Shenandoah--captures a vital truth about American history. As people moved west, they built new societies from old materials, in a double-acting process that made America what is today.
Based on an acclaimed exhibition at the Virginia Historical society, the book studies three stages of migration to, within, and from Virginia. Each stage has its own story to tell. All of them together offer an opportunity to study the westward movement through three centuries, as it has rarely been studied before.
Fischer and Kelly believe that the westward movement was a broad cultural process, which is best understood not only through the writings of intellectual elites, but also through the physical artifacts and folkways of ordinary people. The wealth of anecdotes and illustrations in this volume offer a new way of looking at John Smith and William Byrd, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Daniel Boone, Dred Scott, and scores of lesser known gentry, yeomen, servants, and slaves who were all 'bound away' to an old new world.
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Rated by buyers 
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This very interesting book takes an in-depth look at Virginia history and how migration from Virginia affected the states west of Virginia. It's of particular interest to Virginians and to anyone studying the spread of attitudes in the USA.
Although the book began as a catalog for an exhibition, it expanded into a rich social history. The authors argue that long-accepted theories put forth by Frederick Jackson Turner on freedom and the frontier are not compatible with the facts of Virginia history.
The story of the spread of slavery presents some fascinating "what-ifs." Large numbers of Virginians who were uncomfortable with slavery left the state for areas where that unjust institution was not accepted, making it difficult for a series of anti-slavery proposals to pass. Imagine how different the American Civil War would have been if Virginia had eliminated slavery. The state might not voted to secede; Lee might not have fought against the Union.
My only criticism is that the argument with Turner gets a bit tiresome by the concluding chapter, but on the whole, this is an extremely interesting work. There are numerous footnotes which are well-organized.
Rated by buyers 
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I didn't think Bound Away was that good. The topic sounded interesting and David Hackett Fischer (who subsequently wrote Washington's Crossing) was one of the two authors, so I thought I'd give it a try.
There were several sections that I did like, such as the section on the beginnings of the Virginia colony and how it changed from a dysfunctional colony to a colony run by elites and William Berkeley. The section on the early differences between the sections within Virginia was OK (but not great), as was the section on the rapid decline within Virginia that started in 1770, which caused a steady exodus of people from the once most populous and powerful state over the subsequent 80 years.
It was interesting to appreciate how the immigrants took Virginia culture with them into their new home states, but not fascinating, though I did appreciate the section on slavery, comparing slavery in Virginia and the south and what affect the exodus had on the institution
Things got really tedious when the book delved (several times) into lists of families in Kentucky, Tennessee, Texas, etc, that had their origins in Virginia. Perhaps, I thought, if I were from Virginia I'd be interested in this, but, alas, I'm not. Another reviewer below says that the book reads like a museum catalogue (in many places), and that about sums it up for me, too.
Rated by buyers 
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This book is an professional historian's view of the culture of the poor Scots exodus from their provety in Scotland through Ireland and onwards to America. The book replaces myths and folk tales with historical facts and a professional's interpretation of the meaning of this mass migration.
I found it enlightening background for why my ancestors from Scotland left to seek the good life in the wilderness of West Augusta County, Virginia.
Rated by buyers -
Bound Away by Brandeis University History Professor David Hackett Fischer and James C. Kelley of the Virginia Historical Society is the history of three migrations: to Virginia, within Virginia, and from Virginia.
The very first of these migrations, to Virginia from Britain, summarizes Fischer's earlier book, Albion's Seed (see my review) which describes the settlement of Virginia by Anglican-Royalist-Cavaliers from the south and west of England during the period of Cromwell's Puritan Protectorate (1649-1660). This migration pattern continued after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 under the guidance of Sir William Berkley, the governor of Virginia who actively recruited members of this aristocratic group and worked to purge Virginia of Puritans, Quakers and other dissenting groups.
Migration within Virginia resulted in the emergence of the distinctive subcultures of Virginia's regions: the original Tidewater settlements which expanded to the Northern Neck (between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers), Southside (the south-central area bordering on North Carolina), the Eastern Shore (across the Chesapeake Bay), Hampton Roads (the maritime region at the mouth of the Chesapeake), the Piedmont (from the fall line to the Blue Ridge mountains), and the Shenandoah Valley. This period was characterized by increased diversity in the population brought on in part by the Toleration Act in Britain which extended toleration (but not public office) to religious dissenters. Prominent among the Virginians were the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians and various German protestant sects.
Migration from Virginia was already well underway at the time of Virginia ascendancy as very first among equal states, the Virginia "Dynasty" of presidents from Jefferson through Monroe, 1801- 1825. Virginia's economy was largely dependent on agriculture, especially tobacco and corn. As the soil became exhausted and other states developed into competitors for these products, Virginia became an exporter of people. Free whites who chose to emigrate to the new southern states, the southern parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and even farther west. Black slaves were sold to plantations throughout the South while the small number of free blacks emigrated to northern states. Both these migrations dispersed elements of Virginia's cultural traditions throughout significant parts of the country, excepting the northern tier of states.
Throughout the book, a recurring theme is the reevaluation of historian Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis. In 1893, Jackson very first suggested that the American frontier was a major determining factor in the development of the United States. He proposed that the availability of free land on the frontier promoted the development of freedom and openness in government and society. In addition, he cited the frontier as a melting pot of different cultures in which a new and unique American culture was created by the merging of old cultures in a new environment. Fischer and Kelly take issue with this thesis, pointing out the major influence of cultural continuity in the western migration of Virginians. They also cite the work of other historians, notably the Russian V. O. Kliuchevsky, who cited the availability of free land at the frontier of Tsarist Russia as a factor contributing to the development of governmental and social institutions that were neither free nor open.
Bound Away was particularly interesting to me as a person who has lived most of his life in Virginia, but might not have the same appeal to others. For that reason, I'd recommend Fischer's Albion's Seed as a starting point for exploring migration and cultural continuity in America.
Rated by buyers -
Fischer wrote _Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America,_ which is one of the best works published in several decades in comparative and local U.S. history, and in many ways this is a continuation of the "Virginia" section of that book. Which is a bit surprising, since the author is a New Englander and previously showed considerable preference for the folkways of Massachusetts over those in the South. Since I have numerous forebears in Virginia, I was particularly interested in the very first three chapters: "Migration to Virginia," "Migration in Virginia," and "Migration beyond Virginia." All of those apply to my people and Fischer's coverage of the in-through-and-out process is first-rate. As before, he's an old-fashioned historian, spending a lot of time describing the concrete experiences of particular individuals and families, not spinning out historiographical theory. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Virginia's very first couple of centuries.
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