The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped the Country and Forged Our National Identity by Andro Linklater (June 2007)
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Overview: With the same mix of compelling narrative history and captivating historical argument that made his previous book, Measuring America, such a success, Andro Linklater relates in fascinating detail how the borders and boundaries that formed states and a nation inspired the sense of identity that has have ever since been central to the American experiment.
Linklater opens with America’s greatest surveyor, Andrew Ellicott, measuring the contentious boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia in the summer of 1784; and he ends standing at the yellow line dividing the United States and Mexico at Tijuana. In between, he chronicles the evolving shape of the nation, physically and psychologically. As Americans pushed westward in the course of the nineteenth century, the borders and boundaries established by surveyors like Ellicott created property, uniting people in a desire for the government and laws that would protect it. Challenging Frederick Jackson Turner’s famed frontier thesis, Linklater argues that we are, thus, defined not by open spaces but by boundaries. "What Americanized the immigrants was not the frontier experience," Linklater writes, "but the fact that it took place inside the United States frontier." Those same borders had the ability to divide as well as unite, as the great battle over internal boundaries during the Civil War would show. By century’s end, however, we were spreading U.S. power beyond our borders, an act that, seen through Linklater’s eyes, offers an intriguing perspective on our role in the world today.
Linklater’s great achievement is to weave these provocative arguments into a dramatic storyline, wherein the actions of Ellicott, Thomas Jefferson, the treasonous general James Wilkinson, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas, and numerous hitherto invisible settlers, all illuminate the shaping of the nation. This brilliant book will alter forever readers’ perception of America and what it means to be an American.
Genre: Non-Fiction, Geography, History
"Linklater’s Measuring America, a revealing history of the survey system that demarcates much American real estate, created an audience sure to be keen on this sequel. It explores how the international borders of the U.S. came to be, arguing against the renowned "frontier thesis" of historian Frederick Jackson Turner. That scholarly scaffolding does not lessen the narrative attraction of Linklater’s story, which relates the career of Andrew Ellicott (1754–1820). If a boundary survey was needed in the 1780s and 1790s, he was the man to do it. Ellicott made his reputation by delineating the state lines of Pennsylvania, and George Washington tapped him to apply precision to Pierre L’Enfant’s street plan for the capital. The Adams administration designated him to run the boundary between the U.S. and Spanish Florida. Easier said than done, this project took several years to accomplish, displayed Ellicott at his technical and patriotic best, and lets Linklater flesh out his contention that the establishment of formal borders encouraged democracy’s development. An intelligent expression of national history within cartographic history." ~Booklist"A history of America that looks at land from a slightly different angle – that of real estate… Mr. Linklater’s history is one of increasing federal power. A territory had to meet federal standards before it could be admitted as a state, and so the interior became more loyal to federal power than the original 13 colonies. The most exciting episode in this book concerns a plot to break Kentucky and Tennessee off from the union, in collusion with the Spanish government at Natchez. Only the good offices of Andrew Ellicott, Mr. Linklater’s favorite surveyor and perennial hero, prevented the conspiracy, by proving in 1797 that Natchez actually lay within American territory, in modern day Mississippi – as opposed to Spanish Florida. After Ellicott promised the local white landowners that their property – including slaves – would be preserved, the assumption of American jurisdiction was assured." ~Benjamin Lytal, New York Sun
"This book, addressing little-known history, will appeal to general readers, while students can use it to research the other side of Turner’s thesis. Highly recommended for both public and college libraries." ~Library Journal, starred review
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