James C. Kelly

Really a book about migration and Virginia as the (then) West became populated by whites from the 18th century and onwards, but I read it more for its account of how different fairly recent societies that we count as precursors to the modern, "free" societies were. The book is framed as a third way between the "Turner thesis" (American open society is a product of the frontier movement) and the modern debunking of that view, and suggests that Turner was right to concentrate on the frontier, but that it was the impulse of seeking out itself that is to credit for the open society that developed.

Contra Turner, but sometimes with hints of a more open society:
-Oligarchies a symptom of how not everything free.
-conservative.
-Harsh penalties, breaking arms, piercing tongue
-First many sirs, then fewer. Then more low schooled etc. young.
-Many were slaves at first, became free.
-Trade of convicts big in the bigger area
-also whites were slaves.
-Little individualism and openness as turner claimed. Hierarchical, subservient culture. But also restless.
-Closed society: Sir William: "I thank God, there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shall not have these hundred; for learning has brought disobedience, and heresy, and sects into the world, and printing has divulged them, and libels against the best government. God keep us from both! (p. 103)"
-Repression and punishment of dissent. Then came tolerance, under English law, which became a more spacious concept of freedom.
-Virginians who traveled further west recreated their old society, with big inequalities. "Within this system of stratification, freedom was perceived in inegalitarian terms as a set of hegemonic liberties which people possessed in different degrees. Some at the top had many liberties. Others at the bottom had none. This was an idea of hegemonic freedom which coexisted with slavery. Many in Virginia and the South felt no contradiction in demanding freedom for themselves and slavery for others. (p. 279)"

Some scattered facts.
-Most settlers initially stemming from same area south in England.
-Slave folk culture developed. Song, banjo.
-The Quakers were very early to ban slavery.

For a good overview, read the concluding chapter.… (mehr)