How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky From Daniel Boone to Henry Clay

by Stephen Aron

Eighteenth-century Kentucky was a place where Indian and European cultures collided―and, surprisingly, coincided. But this mixed world did not last, and it eventually gave way to nineteenth-century commercial and industrial development. How the West Was Lost tracks the overlapping conquest, colonization, and consolidation of the trans-Appalachian frontier. Not a story of paradise lost, this is a book about possibilities lost. It focuses on the common ground between Indians and backcountry settlers which was not found, the frontier customs that were not perpetuated, the lands that were not distributed equally, the slaves who were not emancipated, the agrarian democracy that was not achieved, and the millennium that did not arrive. Seeking to explain why these dreams were not realized, Stephen Aron shows us what did happen during Kentucky's tumultuous passage from Daniel Boone's world to Henry Clay's.

Genres: History, American History, American, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published July 8, 1996

Reviews

[Alessandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the summer of 1801 a promise of reform swelled in the hearts of Kentuckians—black and white, male and female. Thousands gathered in the town of Cane Ridge to witness the vociferous appeals of James McCready, who envisioned a new path to salvation. The Great Revival that engulfed the region rested on a platform of increased egalitarianism and work for the common good. Their egalitarian rhetoric tinged with anti-capitalism incited fear among the established landed elite, who handled the levers of power and profitability in the state. The sheer number of revivalists alone unsettled a political, economic, and social status quo that favored a minority at the expense of common folk. It was a moment filled with the possibility of reform in Kentucky—a chance to balance the distribution of wealth and power. Within a decade, however, many white male Kentuckians defected from the movement and still more silenced their abolitionist cries. The opportunity was lost, and the decline of the Kentucky revivalists added to a historical trajectory ripe with missed opportunities. Historian Stephen Aron charts these missed opportunities in his early history of Kentucky—How the West Was Lost: The Transformation of Kentucky from Daniel Boom to Henry Clay.
Aron is particularly interested in the transformation of Kentucky from a hunter’s paradise to a merchant-manufacturing and agricultural center. In Aron's rendering of Kentucky history, the continual emphasis on privatization and simplification of the law resulted in a political system that privileged a wealthy landholding elite. The entrenchment of this political platform, embodied in Henry Clay's Bluegrass System, persevered in spite of challenges made by Native Americans, back country hunters, slaves, small farmers, and revivalists. As a result, Kentucky emerges, in Aron's words, as a "broken promised land" (5).
Kentucky, the frontier of Euro-American colonization in the eighteenth century, is an important geographic orientation for Aron's work. The Bluegrass State acted as a testing ground for the eventual conquest of land west of the Mississippi. Historiographically, Aron harnessed a revisionist lens, but noticeably critiques New West historians. He does not simply seek to counter triumphalist narratives by inverting the events and emphasizing Native American and working class victimization, but instead attempts to understand how multiple cultural outlooks, socio-economic statuses, and religious and political points of view collided in and constructed the Bluegrass State.
This tale of transformation is bookended by the lives of two very different Kentuckians, who represented the transition from backcountry wilderness to gentrified community. Aron's begins with Daniel Boone's early eighteenth century "Kentucke": a meeting ground of Native and Anglo hunters. Boone, Ohio Indians, and other Euro-American settlers had conflicted views of hunting practices, but they maintained a tenuous coexistence in the years leading up to the American Revolution. Following the Revolution, "rights in the woods" and the coexistence of Natives and backwoodsmen disintegrated in the wake of increased settlement and land speculation (102). The violent contestations between American settlers and Natives who had long used the fertile valleys of Kentucky ended in the prohibition of Shawnee hunting in the region after Dunsmore's War. The capitalist impulse of Kentucky's new inhabitants exacerbated existing cultural tensions—in Aron's words, "American arrogance quashed any lingering chance for coexistence" (49). Daniel Boone and his coterie of hunters, however, were not innocent victims in this transformation from a hunter's homeland to a land speculators paradise. He and other Anglo hunters’ profit-mindedness and conceptions of manliness resulted in the drastic decline of bison, deer, and beaver populations. Ultimately, capitalistic tendencies undermined the ability of Kentucky to remain a hunter's paradise.
The gluttonous hunting practices of Boone-style hunters soon gave way to the salivating land appetites of Virginia's landed elites. As soon as settlers cleared Kentucky of its indigenous inhabitants, chaotic contestations over property ruled the day. Lawyers, typified by Henry Clay, enter the scene bent on building a system that would protect property and privatize land. As a Kentucky politician, Clay's three-pronged "Bluegrass System" championed protective tariffs, internal improvements, and banking. These programs, according to Clay, would benefit all (white) Americans and increase the state's growing merchant-manufacturing empire. As Aron reiterates, Clays program acted as "a Hamiltonian political economy in Jeffersonian garb" (138). Yet this system increasingly relied on slave labor and a landless working class. The growing gap between the landed elite and laborers/farmers (free and unfree) was further exacerbated by a banking system that assaulted working classes with paper money and high interest rates.
Aron is quick to point out that these tactics did not rise without resistance—without opportunities for reform. Native Americans in the early 18th century mounted their own three-pronged program of war, incorporation, and selective appropriation in order to combat the onslaught of Euro-American colonization. In later years plantation and factory owners lived in fear of slave rebellions. Additionally, Green River Country farmers and local politicians fought against the expansion of banks and paper money. Revivalists also challenged what had become an increasingly stratified social, racial, and economic landscape.
Yet, as the title implies, these opportunities faded in the wake of war, pandering, and profiteering. Aron outlines how Ohio Indians grew dependent on trading systems and thus tempered their ability to successfully overthrow Anglo settlement, while Green River County members slowly bought into the banking system with hopes of commercial expansion, and revivalists quelled their abolitionist stance because of their own capitalist imperatives. Green River Country, in particular, became "a facsimile of the bluegrass" (168). In the end, the lure of a dollar blunted the swords of reform in the region. Left in the wake of this transition was a society with a substantial gap between the "haves" and the "have nots."
Aron's materialist lens offers a unique perspective on the transition of an American state, yet it also left the reader with many unanswered questions. In particular, Aron's portrayal of Native Americans vastly oversimplifies their role in the region, and new literature in Native American history casts serious doubt on his assertion that Indians and white Americans would never again meet on equal terms as they did in the Ohio Valley (197). His emphasis on the concentration of wealth and power also neglected to develop the role of gender. A few paragraphs on women are sprinkled throughout the text, but fail to fully interrogate the impact of gendered relations in the region.
Yet these quibbles should not opaque the important work Aron presents us. His expert documentation of the transition from a potentially egalitarian society to an oligarchical political system holds important lessons for us all. How the West was Lost feels oddly in step with contemporary chasms between the wealthy elite and, well, everybody else. In many ways these cycles of power consolidation and subaltern resistance continue to play out across American history.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to read this because for some reason I find Kentucky fascinating. And beautiful! It is lovely there, with the rolling hills and the bourbon. And its history aligns with the history of my home state and region - Maine and northern New England - in interesting ways. Kentucky saw a burst of settlement from Virginia and the Carolinas at basically the same time Maine saw a burst of settlement from southern New England, roughly 1790-1810. This let to ongoing, bitter conflict between land speculators and backcountry squatters in both places, and evangelical revival in both places. The difference is that Kentucky had slavery and bordered on the western frontier, while Maine did not have slavery and bordered on the British.
So the gist here is that I was particularly interested by this story of how what was supposed to be the best "poor man's country" ended up sliding into the same old slavery and rule by rich landowners that characterized the older southern states. There is some good stuff here about the early years too, the Boone years, when Kentucky was the best hunter's country (because the Indians cultivated it that way) and the later years, when revivals burned over the area repeatedly, and the various denominations sold their souls to accommodate with slavery. If I was teaching on westward expansion or the early republic I would definitely consider assigning this book or at least a chapter of it.

[Matt Shake · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this book when I was allowed to sit in at a graduate level Western history class at UC Irvine. So imagine my surprise when the professor assigns us to read a book about Kentucky! Kentucky, to me, is a border state where Eastern and Southern culture mixed--not Western culture! I had never thought of the "west" being further east than Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico. But the author points out quite effectively that the definition of what constituted the "west" (in American's minds) was always shifting geographically to the west. Indeed maybe the only constant within the definition of "the West" in America was that it was where "the frontier" lied. A land of unexplored wilderness and "savage" Indians. And this was the land of Kentucky in the time of Daniel Boone. A fascinating rumination on what "the West" means in the collective memory of the American people.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aron is framing the emergence of Kentucky history along a continuum of loss—a space in which initial negotiations of land usage, politics, class, and religion might have seemed profoundly egalitarian and democratic in their structure, but ultimately were produced as replicas of the gentry-dominated structures of Virginia and the greater antebellum South. Using Daniel Boone and Henry Clay as the opposing ends of this period, Aron notes the contrast between the Boone prototype of the frontier woodsman, one who “lived in a hunter’s world” versus Clay who lived to drive forward the aims of planters, landed gentry, and the political elite. That both of these men’s constituencies would benefit off the backs of displaced Native Americans and enslaved African-Americans does not go unmarked, and Aron’s focus in Chapter 1 and 2 about the initial promise that an alliance between Indians and colonists might have held is perhaps the most elegiac and compelling part of this text. Hunters could meet with Indians with a common appreciation of the land and its bounty, one that would be seen in a dramatically different light by the land prospectors and tenants that would soon displace them. That authority would then be located in land ownership, in the legislation of passage through landscapes, and the financial endowment and largesse of the elite would mean the end of Kentucky as a potential utopia. Yet Aron also leverages an important environmental and ecological critique here—that by the time Clay ascends to power, the abundance of the landscape has become so mythologized and propagandized by speculators that it has ceased to hold any real meaning. The frontier then moves from Edenic promise to unfulfilled myth, and Kentucky in this era is a “borderland” between Indian and European, past and present, about things promised and possibilities lost.

[Judy Owens · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you read one book on early Kentucky history, make it this one. There was a bright moment when Kentucky represented hope for settlers looking for a good poor man's land. It was my privilege to meet Dr. Aron earlier this summer and he was an excellent speaker. While his writing lacks the literary luster of McCullough or Chernow, this telling of opportunities lost is riveting, backed by original and compelling research.

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just when I think "I'm not that interested," Aron puts in a passage that keeps me reading! His work has enough depth and breadth to make the story of Kentucky settlement into more than a local history, despite moving back and forth through time that made me pause more than once.

[Rebecca Frodge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books detailing the early battle for the soul of Kentucky. After my most recent rereading I thought I would include below a few of the main ideas explored in the book. (It also contains great sections about Native American society and the role of hunting in the frontier but as those are explored in other books I won’t put them into detail.)

Early settlers of Kentucky believed that taking more land than you could use was unfair. “…to grant any Person a larger quantity of Land” than he needed for himself and his family was “subversive of the fundamental Principles of free republican government.”

But as more affluent people moved to the state, land speculation increased and the early settlers became disenchanted. “To the dismay of those who hoped it would become the best poor man’s country, the new state of Kentucky became a paradise for lawyers.” It seemed that who ever had the most money and lawyers usually won in land dispute lawsuits.

In an attempt to provide a more even playing field Kentuckians wanted to implement changes in the law. “The people of Kentucky are all turned politicians ,” Federal Court Judge Harry Innes wrote Thomas Jefferson in 1791. “The Peasantry are perfectly mad…They say plain honest Farmers are the only men who ought to be elected.”

The call for a redistribution of land was especially unsettling to the affluent. Residents with small land holdings thought it was unfair that large tracts of land were owned by people who did not live in Kentucky or did not work the land themselves.

Another reform included replacing district courts with circuit courts made up of judges predominantly unschooled in the law. “Proponents hailed it as means of making justice more accessible and less expensive for common folk.”

But tax code and law changes for land redistribution were short lived or failed. In addition the circuit court changes proved unsuccessful. “The role of lawyers increased. Fanciful arguments readily swayed untutored justices.”

Less affluent early Kentuckians also condemned slavery. Not always for moral reasons though but rather as an unfair competition. “Antislavery … appealed to propertyless men who anticipated that elimination of unfree competitors would encourage the breakup of large plantations.” Early constitution conventions made inroads for the elimination of slavery but in the end the sentiments of Ky House Representative John Breckinridge won out, “…where is the difference whether I am robbed of my horse by a highywayman, or of my slave by a set of people called a Convention … If they can by one experiment emancipate our slaves; the same principle pursued, will enable them at a second experiment to extinguish our land titles.”

The “rights of the woods” and land for all of Daniel Boone’s era thus gave rise to the era of men like Henry Clay in Kentucky. What had once been the best poor man’s country slowly turned into “a good land for those with slaves and capital.”

“Putting wage and slave labor in competition, (Henry Clay’s) Bluegrass System was no boon for poor men, free or unfree. In the early nineteenth century Bluegrass, those who did not get ahead had increasing trouble getting along.”

[Fel · Rating 5 out of 5]

In his book How the West Was Lost, Stephen Aron explains the transformation of Kentucky during the lives of Daniel Boone and Henry Clay. While their lives overlapped by about 40 years, they lived in very different worlds. Daniel Boone was a traditional backwoodsman living in a crude shelter near Indian country, who lived of the land. Henry Clay, on the other hand, moved to Kentucky to pursue his commercial and manufacturing interests, and set up a plantation outside of Lexington. Aron uses this transformation to support Frederick Jackson Turner���s idea that a procession of higher civilizations will win the West, but disagrees with the orderly fashion in which Turner describes it. In Kentucky, the conquest, colonization and consolidation processes overlapped in dynamic and often messy ways, and although America finally emerged victorious, it had a high cost.

Aron draws from a variety of sources, especially manuscripts like the Draper collection as well as letters, newspaper articles, census reports, and religious writings. The selection of sources for each chapter are very appropriate, for chapters on land speculation and laws he leans more on depositions and other court records, while chapters dealing with frontier life logically use more census reports, letters, and newspaper articles. He seems to have drawn a well-rounded picture of life in Kentucky from these documents.

Overall, the books gives readers and understanding of the complex dynamic relationships that shaped the frontier settlements of Kentucky. He makes it clear that it was not just a tract of land that America could claim by simply driving out the Indians. On many occasions, white settlers also created tension amongst themselves especially between the poorer settlers and gentry land speculators. It opens the possibility for similar studies on the social dynamics of frontier life that do not necessarily focus on violence as a defining characteristic of the frontier.

[Jo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting overview of early Kentucky history, with particular attention paid to land speculation and its role in the transformation of Kentucky from the world that Daniel Boone knew to the one molded by men like Henry Clay.

In writing about white men, Aron frequently mentions manhood and how notions of what constituted manly behavior shaped the region - from long hunting expeditions to the rejection of evangelicalism. He contrasts this with Shawnee social mores and, in discussing gender relations, he observes that Shawnee women enjoyed much more independence and power than their white counterparts.

I found Aron's writing on the social dynamics of early Kentucky and the accommodation of slavery particularly interesting. I would have liked to have seen these topics, along with the long-term impacts of white colonization on the Shawnee and other Ohio Valley Native American nations, covered in greater depth.

Overall, this book is a good, informative introduction to the Bluegrass state.

[Mitzi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tons of good information about early Kentucky history - a bit of a dry read, but informative. :)