Frontier History: 1763-1893

For nearly 150 years, the American pioneer was followed to every frontier across fifty-nine chapters in Paxson's masterwork, "History of the West," offering an essential, sweeping account of the American West and westward expansion from 1763-1893. This work, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History, filled a critical void, as a single volume covering the comprehensive "History of the West" did not previously exist.

Paxson's literary genius shines, not through quotations from secondary and source material, but by making the material a part of himself. Rather than conforming to a social history, Paxson takes a historical, geographic, and pragmatic view of Westward expansion, masterfully covering American history from the War for Independence to the Louisiana Purchase, conflicts with Native Americans and Civil War, Presidential edicts from Washington to Roosevelt, and even offering keen insight into the little-studied intricacies of frontier finance and the inside workings of canal and railroad corporations.

"Future historians will gratefully remember Mr. Paxson for essaying a task which others had either shirked or felt themselves incompetent to perform," as this work is a must-read for any student of American history. Frederic Logan Paxson, the author, was an American historian, President of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, and possessed degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. As a historian, he was an authority on the American frontier and won the 1925 Pulitzer Prize for this seminal work.

The chapters of this work include a comprehensive account of the American Frontier from 1763, the Forks of the Ohio, the Shenandoah Country and the Tennessee, the Rear of the Revolution, the Land Problem, the Creation of the Public Domain, the National Land System, the Old Northwest, the Western Boundaries, the First New States, Political Theories of the Frontier, Jeffersonian Democracy, the Frontier of 1800, Ohio: The Clash of Principles, the Purchase of Louisiana, Problems of the Southwest Border, the Bonds of Unity, the Wabash Frontier: Tecumseh, 1811, the Western War of 1812, Stabilizing the Frontier, the Great Migration, Statehood on the Ohio: Indiana and Illinois, the Cotton Kingdom: Mississippi and Alabama, Missouri: The New Sectionalism, Public Land Reform, Frontier Finance, the American System, Jacksonian Democracy, the East, and the Western Markets, the Western Internal Improvements, the Permanent Indian Frontier, 1825-1841, the Mississippi Valley Boom, the Border States: Michigan and Arkansas, the Independent State of Texas, 1837: The Prostrate West, the Trail to Santa Fe, the Settlement of Oregon, the "State" of Deseret, the War with Mexico, the Conquest of California, Far West and Politics, Preemption, the Frontier of the Forties, the Railroad Age, Land Grants and the Western Roads, Kansas-Nebraska and the Indian Country, "Pike's Peak or Bust!", the Frontier of the Mineral Empire, the Overland Route, the Public Lands: Wide Open, the Plains in the Civil War, the Union Pacific Railroad, the Disruption of the Tribes, the Panic of 1873, Frontier Panaceas, the Cow Country, the Closed Frontier, the Admission of the "Omnibus" States, and the Disappearance of the Frontier.

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