At the 1795 treaty council that sealed Anthony Wayne's victory at Fallen Timbers in northwest Ohio, the Wyandot leader Tarhe spoke for the assembled Native leaders when he admonished the American emissaries: "Take care of your little ones; an impartial father equally regards all his children." Spoken two decades after the minutemen's shots had echoed across Lexington Green, Tarhe's words compel historians to reconsider the rosy truisms that customarily encircle the age of the Early Republic. The essays in this volume begin to perform this important reexamination of the Native American experience in the post-Revolutionary period. Tarhe's eloquent words and similar evidence quoted by the volume's contributors show that American Indians were not defeated refugees who dutifully stood aside in the wake of the British defeat, nor were they passive victims of American expansion. The book's three parts reflect the dynamic nature of the Native Americans' struggle: the first provides broad discussions of the interaction between Native Americans and the United States in the postwar era; the second traces histories of specific tribal communities; and the third explores the powerful repertoire of stories and pictures that Americans used to describe Native Americans to themselves during an era of national expansion. These essays open up for consideration a more complex history of the Early Republic. ContributorsColin G. Calloway, Dartmouth CollegeR. David Edmunds, University of Texas at DallasVivien Green Fryd, Vanderbilt UniversityReginald Horsman, University of Wisconsin-MilwaukeeElise Marienstras, University of ParisJoel W. Martin, Franklin and Marshall CollegeJames H. Merrell, Vassar CollegeTheda Perdue, University of North CarolinaDaniel K. Richter, Dickinson CollegeDaniel H. Usner Jr., Cornell UniversityRichard White, Stanford University

In a compilation of essays, Early Republic: People and Perspectives explores the varied experiences of many different groups of Americans across racial, gender, religious, and regional lines in the early years of the country. Written by expert contributors drawing on extensive new research, Early Republic: People and Perspectives ranges across the broad spectrum of society to explore the everyday lives of Americans from the birth of the nation to the beginning of Jacksonian Age (roughly 1830). In a series of chapters, Early Republic provides vivid portraits of the farmers, entrepreneurs, laborers, women, Native Americans, and slaves who made up the population of the United States in its infancy. Key events, such as the two-party political system, the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and the expansion into the Ohio Valley, are seen through the eyes of the ordinary citizens who helped make them happen, in turn, making the United States what it is today.

Reflecting the best recent scholarship of Early America and the Early Republic, the articles in this collection study the many dimensions of American political history. The authors explore Native American interests and encounters with settlers, diplomatic endeavors, environmental issues, legal debates and practiced law, women's citizenship and rights, servitude and slavery and popular political activity. The geographical perspective is as expansive as the topical, with strong representation of trans-Atlantic and continental interests of many nations and peoples. The international and interdisciplinary perspectives illustrate the dynamic transformations of America during this era of settlement, conquest, development, revolution and nation building.

By 1840, American politics was a paradox—unprecedented freedom and equality for men of European descent, and the simultaneous isolation and degradation of people of African and Native American descent. Historians have characterized this phenomenon as the "white republic." Race and the Early Republic offers a rich account of how this paradox evolved, beginning with the fledgling nation of the 1770s and running through the antebellum years. The essays in the volume, written by a wide array of scholars, are arranged so as to allow a clear understanding of how and why white political supremacy came to be in the early United States. Race and the Early Republic is a collection of diverse, insightful and interrelated essays that promote an easy understanding of why and how people of color were systematically excluded from the early U.S. republic.

"An authoritative, sweeping, and fresh new biography of the nation's first president, Colin G. Calloway's book reveals fully the dimensions and depths of George Washington's relations with the First Americans."--Provided by publisher.

George Washington had contact with Native Americans throughout most of his life. His first encounter as a teenager left him with the impression that they were nothing more than an "ignorant people." As a young man he fought both alongside and against Native Americans during the French and Indian War and gained a grudging respect for their fighting abilities. During the American Revolution, Washington made it clear that he welcomed Indian allies as friends but would do his utmost to crush Indian enemies. As president, he sought to implement a program to "civilize" Native Americans by teaching them methods of agriculture and providing the implements of husbandry that would enable them to become proficient farmers--the only way, he believed, Native Americans would survive in a white-dominated society. Yet he discovered that his government could not protect Indian lands as guaranteed in countless treaties, and the hunger for Indian land by white settlers was so rapacious that it could not be controlled by an inadequate federal military establishment. While Washington appeared to admit the failure of the program, this book--a unique and necessary exploration of Washington's experience with and thoughts on Native Americans--contends he deserves credit for his continued efforts to implement a policy based on the just treatment of America's indigenous peoples. Distributed for George Mason University Press

First Published in 2015. This text holds four volumes of essays and entries on the early Republic and Antebellum era in America spanning the end of the American Revolution in 1781 to the outbreak of Civil War in 1861. The Americans forged a new government in theory and then in practice, with the beginnings of industrialisation and the effects of urbanisation, widespread poverty, labour strife, debates around slavery and sectional discord. By the end of the nineteenth century American had a powerhouse economy, new technologies and the emergence of major social reform movements, creation of uniquely American art and literature and the conquest of the West. This encyclopaedia offers a historic reference.