The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, July 1932 - April, 1933 Page: 241
328 p. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Book Reviews and Notices
izing a tax for the support of education, a measure which "should
rank with Johnson's homestead bill [introduced in Congress] as
one of the most constructive contributions to the growth of
democracy." Thus, at long intervals, did the tree of frontier
democracy bear fruit.
Professor Abernethy cuts convincingly across orthodox views
in several respects. In the first place, he shows that the frontier
did not rapidly grant the privileges and rights in which democ-
racy is interested. Secondly, he shows that the development of
the frontier, at least in Tennessee, did not result directly from
the work of individual settlers who moved west either to buy
land or to become squatters on the land. The extension of the
Tennessee frontier seems to have been directly proportional to
the influence which the "speculator politician" had in govern-
mental circles. Whenever this fortune hunter was ready to pur-
chase more lands for speculation, then the frontiersman was al-
lowed to move farther west to become the tool of this politicul
exploiter. Finally, Professor Abernethy does not regard Andrew
Jackson as a part of the movement of Jacksonian democracy in
Tennessee. Governor William Carroll was the man "who, be-
tween 1821 and 1835, established 'Jacksonian Democracy' in Ten-
nessee." Jackson, the prot6g6 of William Blount, "had no in-
terest in the humanitarian movement" under Carroll, according
to Abernethy, and "was the figurehead rather than . . . the
leader of the democratic movement which bears his name."
Not only are the acquisitive activities of land speculators in
the formative period of Tennessee history emphasized, but the
everyday social and economic conditions of the frontiersmen re-
ceive considerable attention. The scholarship of the book is at-
tested by ample and careful documentation, a workable index,
useful maps and charts, and an extensive bibliography.
R. L. BTESELE.
Edmund Ruffin, Southerner: A Study in Secession. By Avery
Craven. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1932. Pp. xiii,
283. Price, $3.00.)
The book here reviewed is the biography of a Southern gentle-
man whom John Tyler called America's greatest agriculturist.241
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, July 1932 - April, 1933, periodical, 1933; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101093/m1/261/?rotate=90: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.