Charleston County Public Library

The fabric of America, how our borders and boundaries shaped the country and forged our national identity, Andro Linklater

eng

Includes bibliographical references (p. [309]-316) and index

mapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

The fabric of America

bibliography

138533044

Andro Linklater

how our borders and boundaries shaped the country and forged our national identity

Historian Linklater relates how the borders and boundaries that formed states and a nation inspired the sense of identity that has ever since been central to the American experiment. Linklater opens with America's greatest surveyor, Andrew Ellicott, measuring the contentious boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia in the summer of 1784; and he ends standing at the yellow line dividing the United States and Mexico at Tijuana. In between, he chronicles the evolving shape of the nation, physically and psychologically. As Americans pushed westward in the course of the nineteenth century, the borders and boundaries established by surveyors like Ellicott created property, uniting people in a desire for the government and laws that would protect it. Challenging Frederick Jackson Turner's famed frontier thesis, Linklater argues that we are defined not by open spaces but by boundaries.--From publisher description

The first frontier -- The boundaries of power -- The state as nation -- The bullying states -- Capital speculations -- Mirrors of the Mississippi -- Evidence of treachery -- The reach of government -- American tragedy -- The values of government -- The limits of freedom -- The American frontier -- Crossing the frontier -- The end of frontiers? -- Envoi