September 2023 MBR The American History Shelf

The American History Shelf

Frontier Teachers, second edition
Chris Enss
TwoDot Books
c/o Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group
4501 Forbes Blvd., Suite 200, Lanham, MD 20706
www.rowman.com
9781493064779, $22.95, PB, 218pp

https://www.amazon.com/Frontier-Teachers-Stories-Heroic-Women/dp/1493064770

Synopsis: If countless books and movies are to be believed, America's Wild West was, at heart, a world of cowboys and Indians, sheriffs and gunslingers, scruffy settlers and mountain men -- a man's world.

But with the publication of a newly revised and expanded second edition of "Frontier Teachers" author and historian Chris Enss takes on this stereotype by telling the stories of twelve courageous women who faced down schoolrooms full of children on the open prairies and in the mining towns of the Old West. Now with five new teachers covered and a new chapter, this new and expanded second edition of "Frontier Teachers" brings these important stories to light.

Between 1847 and 1858, more than 600 women teachers traveled across the untamed frontier to provide youngsters with an education, and the numbers grew rapidly in the decades to come, as women took advantage of one of the few career opportunities for respectable work for the ladies of the era.

Enduring hardship, the dozen women whose stories are movingly told in the pages of this new edition "Frontier Teachers" demonstrated the utmost dedication and sacrifice necessary to bring formal education to the Wild West. As immortalized in works of art and literature, for many students their women teachers were heroic figures who introduced them to a world of possibilities -- and by doing so, changed America forever.

Critique: Enhanced for the reader with the addition of a ten page Bibliography and an eight page Index, this new and expanded second edition of "Frontier Teachers" by Chris Enss is a welcome and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and academic library American History and Women's History collections and supplemental curriculum studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, historians, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that this new edition of "Frontier Teachers" from the University of Michigan Press is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $17.99).

Editorial Note: Chris Enss (https://chrisenss.com) has been writing about women of the Old West for more than thirty years. She has penned more than fifty published books on the subject. Her work has been honored with nine Will Rogers Medallion Awards, two Elmer Kelton Book Awards, an Oklahoma Center for the Book Award, three Foreword Review Magazine Book Awards, and two Western Writers of America Spur Finalist Awards. Enss's most recent works are The Widowed Ones: Beyond the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Iron Women: The Ladies Who Helped Build the Railroad, and The Lady and the Mountain Man: Isabella Bird, Mountain Man Jim Nugent, and their Unlikely Friendship.

The Federalist Frontier
Kristopher Maulden
University of Missouri Press
113 Heinkel Bldg., 201 S. 7th Street, Columbia, MO 65211
https://upress.missouri.edu
9780826221964, $45.00, HC, 280pp

https://www.amazon.com/Federalist-Frontier-Northwest-1783-1840-Constitutional/dp/0826221963

Synopsis: With the publication of "The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783-1840" historian and academician Kristopher Maulden deftly traces the development of Federalist policies and the Federalist Party in the first three states of the Northwest Territory (Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois) from the nation's first years until the rise of the Second Party System in the 1820s and 1830s.

Relying on government records, private correspondence, and newspapers, Maulden argues that Federalists originated many of the policies and institutions that helped the young United States government take a leading role in the American people's expansion and settlement westward across the Appalachians. It was primarily they who placed the U.S. Army at the fore of the white westward movement, created and executed the institutions to survey and sell public lands, and advocated for transportation projects to aid commerce and further migration into the region.

Ultimately, the relationship between government and settlers evolved as citizens raised their expectations of what the federal government should provide, and the region embraced transportation infrastructure and innovation in public education.

Historians of early American politics will now have a chance to read about Federalists in the Northwest, and see the early American state in action in fighting Indians, shaping settler understandings of space and social advancement, and influencing political ideals among the citizens. For historians of the early American West, Maulden's work demonstrates that the origins of state-led expansion reach much further back in time than generally understood.

Critique: Featuring a number of Illustrations, forty pages of Notes, a twenty-two page Bibliography, and a six page Index, "The Federalist Frontier: Settler Politics in the Old Northwest, 1783-1840" is an impressively informative and seminal contribution to personal, professional, community, college, and university library Early American History collections and supplemental Constitutional Democracy studies lists. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "The Federalist Frontier" is also available in a paperback edition (9780826222855, $26.00) and in a digital book format (Kindle, $24.70).

Editor's Note: Kristopher Maulden, PhD, teaches high school history. (https://www.bibliovault.org/BV.book.epl?ISBN=9780826274397)

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