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American Leviathan: Empire, Nation, and Revolutionary Frontier

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Once again we are treated to what passes for scholarship today -- a politically correct analysis of (this time) the problems & wars with the Indians west of the Proclamation Line before, during and after the Revolutionary War. The most accurate portion is the British viewpoint and policies, treating the colonies only as providers of a market for English goods and a source of materials and commodities for the home country. In short, a colony and people to be exploited. In this light, the Indians were simply a segment of the British empire, and a curb on colonist ambitions.

However, the Indians are seen by the author as noble savages living in a state of nature, whereas the white settlers west of the Proclamation Line (a temporary expedient) are seen as low life, savage, ruffians, and not worthy of being called white. Amazingly, the author contends the Indians did not as a rule kill innocent women and children. No? Then I guess all those wives and children of settlers who were butchered or tortured to death after capture didn't exist. He only mentions in passing the murder of a woman and her newborn baby that precipitated the Gnadenhuetten Massacre and doesn't mention that the prepetrators were tracked to Gnadenhuetten. John Carpenter had seen them, but they fled Gnadenhuetten before the whites arrived but after leaving evidence of their being in the village.

The author makes liberal use of the explosive term (today) of racism to tar the settlers. The Americans were either poor squatters staking a claim to the land by right of having improved it (like the Israelis would claim in the 20th century), or wealthy and greedy speculators (the author mentions George Washington and Patrick Henry as two examples) using their political connections to obtain the land for almost nothing. He touches on the most interesting facet of the subject by showing that the revolution started in the West through the settlers defying the British in 1774, and offers up the question of whether the revolution was driven from the people upwards, or from the colonial elite downwards. This is an interesting question, and the author should be able to answer it without making both parties seem excessively venal.

Indeed, the author's lack of scholarship and understanding of the times are clearly evident in his attitude toward the Western Pennsylvania settlers and warfare. Evidently the author had never experienced combat (probably not even military service), and does not comprehend that ferocity in battle leads to victory and potential survival. He scolds the whites for their savagery in fighting, as if observing decorem and polite niceties while one is fighting for one's life is the correct approach (this sounds like current questions over the rules of engagement in Iraq.) He also mentions the predominance of Irish names in the West, but not once mentions the term "Scotch-Irish", the people who are primarily the focus of his group. Presbyterian and rebellious, these people made up almost 70% of the Continental Army and Pennsylvania Militia, and counted George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, Daniel Morgan, Anthony Wayne, and many other notables of the era among their numbers. The author is either unaware of the impact of the Scotch-Irish, or wishes to re-write history to meet his own agenda, whatever that might be. It was the Scotch-Irish that provided the bulk of the settlers west of the Proclamation Line, fighting the Indians in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia. The author should know this and have made this easily identified group the focus of his writing. The British at the time generally defined the American Revolution as a Presybterian revolt, fueled by emigrants from Ulster and the lowlands of Scotland. Why can't the author?

In short, the author writes on an interesting subject, but takes a modern revisionist view that negates the value of his study. His treatment of George Rogers Clark is particularly troubling, and he even fails to describe the extraordinary feat of Clark's march across Illinois to attack Vincennes. Apparently if he decides an individual is evil, it is impossible for him to include evidence to the contrary. The book is also a boring read as the author constantly repeats himself as if he needs to reach a certain number of pages. His work is only recommended for readers who are already intimately familiar with his subject and can put the author's biases in perspective.

In recent decades scholars such as Eric HinderakerElusive Empires: Constructing Colonialism in the Ohio Valley, 1673-1800, Alan Taylor The Divided Ground: Indians, Settlers, and the Northern Borderland of the American Revolution, and Richard White The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Studies in North American Indian History), have examined the early American interior more throughly. Patrick Griffin joins these elite scholars with his recent work, _American Leviathan_. Griffin attempts to examine the process of revolutionary settlement in the west, which he persuasively portrays through the lens of Hobbes' Leviathan. While many contemporary Americanists seem to treat the idea of "American Exceptionalism" as taboo, Griffin grabs the bull by the horns. Griffin argues that the troubled and contradictory nature of the American Revolution's legacy--one of freedom and slavery; liberation and oppression--is most visible in the trans-Appalachian frontier. For Griffin, the "frontier" is less of a geographical reality than a process of social change.
Griffin suggests that British imperial policy--rooted in a stadial theory of social evolution--failed in the trans-Appalachian west because it settlers ultimately rejected it as a means to order western society. Those who migrated west rejected British imperial policy which seemed to yield to native tribes while at the same time refusing to protect the preverbal "rights of Englishmen" beyond the Proclamation line of 1763, despite the fact that economic and social forces seemed to push the yeoman farther westward. The crucible of the Revolutionary War set the terms by which the western settlers would coalesce to form the Leviathan. During the conflict in the west, a region defined by Indian and Euro-American violence, the tone of confrontation took on a very explicit language of Indian hatred. During the war, westerners conceived a "notion of order rooted in racial violence" which ultimately would be the prerequisite condition for any return to state sovereignly (167).
Therefore during the early years of the American Republic, westerners' primary concern was that of protection from Indian warfare and eradication of Native peoples from western lands. As such, westerners demanded the new American state provide for their security. The creation of the Leviathan that finally brought order to the west (a mission pursued and failed by all the French, British, and Spanish to some extent) emerged from what Griffin calls the covenant for commonwealth during the "Whiskey Rebellion" crisis of the mid 1790s. The covenant legitimized the American state as the protector of the boundary between "white" and "indian," a key western concern.
Griffin's work reminds us of the complexities of remembering the American Revolution. The flag of the Revolutionary generation is often waved by contemporaries who mythologize this memory. But as Griffin demonstrates, this patriotic vernacular of the American exceptionalism--rooted in a selective memory of the Revolution--obscures the world in which Americans created their Leviathan. The American Revolution was exceptional not only because it achieved the protection and security of Leviathan's sword but because of the racist ideology that fostered its birth. Hence, to understand the Revolution the uncomfortable and contradictory nature of American exceptionalism should not be shunned or ignored, but embraced to understand more fully what it means.
Griffin's interpretation of the Revolution, from west looking east, is refreshing in that it presents a persuasive interpretation of the masses of Americans that fought the second most important Revolution in modern history. Since the 1960s, historians have spend a lot of time uncovering the narratives of Revolutionary actors who were not the elite Founding Fathers; women, slaves, and Indians. While fascinating and important, the significance of these subaltern actors has been entirely over emphasized in their recent attention. In this sense, Griffins work conflates well with TH Breen's new work American Insurgents, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People which argues it was the mass of American yeoman, artisans, and farmers who made the Revolution happen. Griffin gives us a good picture of the forces and ideas that shaped their minds during this era, one that is not entirely admirable to say the least.

This is a great book. The author shifts the thinking about the start of this country. Griffin takes democracy and federalism out of the misty clouds and sinks it into the mud of the frontier and in the dirty hands of the people. It was such a good read, and so thought provoking, I bought copies for each of my brothers and for my father -- all of whom are history buffs.