When Anglo-Americans looked west after the Revolution, they hoped
to see a blank slate upon which to build their continental
republic. However, French settlers had inhabited the territory
stretching from Ohio to Oregon for over a century, blending into
Native American networks, economies, and communities. Images of
these French settlers saturated nearly every American text
concerned with the West. Edward Watts argues that these
representations of French colonial culture played a significant
role in developing the identity of the new nation.
In regard to land, labor, gender, family, race, and religion,
American interpretations of the French frontier became a means of
sorting the empire builders from those with a more moderate and
contained nation in mind, says Watts. Romantic nationalists such as
George Bancroft, Francis Parkman, and Lyman Beecher used the French
model to justify the construction of a nascent empire.
Alternatively, writers such as Margaret Fuller, Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, and James Hall presented a less aggressive vision of
the nation based on the colonial French themselves. By examining
how representations of the French shaped these conversations, Watts
offers an alternative view of antebellum culture wars.