"These essays reflect the highest standard of scholarly inquiry and will be of great value to interpreters of the life and times of George Washington and to scholars interested in cultural encounter and the development of regional identity in the American South."--Kenneth E. Koons, Virginia Military Institute
George Washington's South brings together a diverse array of essays by scholars in the fields of history, literature, art history, and anthropology, focusing on Washington, the development of regional identity in the South, and interactions among many of the region's people. The contributors examine the relationship between George Washington's varied and contradictory careers as a southern planter, general, and president and the emergence of the American South during the 18th century. They explore how regional identity is formed and how the life of Washington reflects the diversity of race, gender, and frontier experiences that confronted the American South during the years of the Early Republic.
Contents
Introduction
Part 1. On the Map and Off: The South as a Diverse Region
1. Remapping Boundaries in the Old Southwest, 1783?1795, by Daniel H. Usner, Jr.
2. Mapping the "American South": Image, Archive, and the Textual Construction of Regional Identity in the Age of Washington, by Martin Brückner
3. "And Die by Inches": George Washington and the Encounter of Cultures on the Southern Colonial Frontier, by Warren R. Hofstra
4. "This gown . . . was much admired and caused much jealousy": Fashion and the Forging of Elite Identities in French Colonial Louisiana, by Sophie White
Part 2. George Washington as Person, Symbol, and Southerner
5. George Washington and Three Women, by Don Higginbotham
6. George Washington: Publicity, Probity, and Power, by David S. Shields
7. George Washington, the South, and the Poetics of National Memory, by Carla Mulford
Part 3. Free and Enslaved Black Americans in George Washington’s South
8. Slave Flight: Mount Vernon, Virginia, and the Wider Atlantic World, by Philip D. Morgan and Michael L. Nicholls
9. "Under the Color of Law": The Ordeal of Thomas Jeremiah, a Free Black Man, and the Struggle for Power in Revolutionary South Carolina, by William R. Ryan
Part 4. George Washington and Southern Indians
10. George Washington, Dragging Canoe, and Southeastern Indian Resistance, by Peter H. Wood
11. Creek Indians and Americans in the Age of Washington, by Robbie Ethridge
12. George Washington and the “Civilization” of the Southern Indians, by Theda Perdue
Tamara Harvey is assistant professor of English at the University of Southern Mississippi. Greg O'Brien is associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi and the author of Choctaws in a Revolutionary Age, 1750-1830.
