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Race, Removal, and the Right to Remain: Migration and the Making of the United States
Who had the right to live within the newly united states of America?
In the country's founding decades, federal and state politicians debated which categories of people could remain and which should be subject to removal. The result was a white Republic, purposefully constructed through contentious legal, political, and diplomatic negotiation. But, as Samantha Seeley demonstrates, removal, like the right to remain, was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' fierce determination to expel white settlers from Native lands and free African Americans' legal maneuvers both to remain within the states that sought to drive them out and to carve out new lives in the West. Never losing sight of the national implications of regional conflicts, Seeley brings us directly to the battlefield, to middle states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested.
Reorienting the history of U.S. expansion around Native American and African American histories, Seeley provides a much-needed reconsideration of early nation building.
In the country's founding decades, federal and state politicians debated which categories of people could remain and which should be subject to removal. The result was a white Republic, purposefully constructed through contentious legal, political, and diplomatic negotiation. But, as Samantha Seeley demonstrates, removal, like the right to remain, was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' fierce determination to expel white settlers from Native lands and free African Americans' legal maneuvers both to remain within the states that sought to drive them out and to carve out new lives in the West. Never losing sight of the national implications of regional conflicts, Seeley brings us directly to the battlefield, to middle states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested.
Reorienting the history of U.S. expansion around Native American and African American histories, Seeley provides a much-needed reconsideration of early nation building.
368 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2021
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About the author
Samantha Seeley
2 booksSamantha Seeley is assistant professor of history at the University of Richmond.
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September 6, 2025i learned a lot about early american history through this book but i have never been the biggest fan of early american history to be fair. i think the theme that was the most interesting was the ideological evolution of freedom/natural rights and how different groups would influence each other's understanding of these concepts.
on another note, history 103d will single-handedly finish my goodreads goal this semester and i'm not complaining.
on another note, history 103d will single-handedly finish my goodreads goal this semester and i'm not complaining.
Displaying 1 of 1 review