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Book Review
Canada and the United States
Edward J. Cashin. William Bartram and the American Revolution on the Southern Frontier. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. 2000. Pp. xv, 319. $39.95.
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In all of the literature about the American Revolution, the details of life and change on the southern frontier have often been neglected. Edward J. Cashin addresses this oversight in a unique way by analyzing the well known Travels (1791) of naturalist William Bartram in the context of his experiences on that frontier. By juxtaposing Bartram's encounters while taking his notes for Travels with the political, military, and social history of the American Revolution on the southern frontier in the 1770s, Cashin succeeds at adding understanding to both stories. |
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Bartram's association with men in South Carolina and Georgia inevitably gave him knowledge of the events leading to the conflict, but he chose not to comment on them. According to Cashin, Bartram "intended to describe an ideal America, an America as he wished it to be" (p. 87). A Quaker who believed that all men should live together in brotherly love, Bartram greeted patriots, tories, and especially Native Americans equally with compassion and friendship. He relished the long hours and days he spent alone with only the company of nature. Harping upon that theme throughout his book, Cashin maintains that Bartram "deliberately ignored the fractious world of humans and focused on the ideal world of plants, animals, and a few selected good people" (p. 159). Once the conflict had ended, Bartram's interest in the welfare of his friends had no relationship to which side they had supported. |
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