From the time Europeans first came to the New World until the closing of the frontier; the benefits of abundant wild animals―from beavers and wolves to fish; deer; and bison―appeared as a recurring theme in colonizing discourses. Explorers; travelers; surveyors; naturalists; and other promoters routinely advertised the richness of the American faunal environment and speculated about the ways in which animals could be made to serve their colonial projects. In practice; however; American animals proved far less malleable to colonizers’ designs. Their behaviors constrained an English colonial vision of a reinvented and rationalized American landscape. In Wild by Nature; Andrea L. Smalley argues that Anglo-American authorities’ unceasing efforts to convert indigenous beasts into colonized creatures frequently produced unsettling results that threatened colonizers’ control over the land and the people. Not simply acted upon by being commodified; harvested; and exterminated; wild animals were active subjects in the colonial story; altering its outcome in unanticipated ways. These creatures became legal actors―subjects of statutes; issues in court cases; and parties to treaties―in a centuries-long colonizing process that was reenacted on successive wild animal frontiers. Following a trail of human–animal encounters from the seventeenth-century Chesapeake to the Civil War–era southern plains; Smalley shows how wild beasts and their human pursuers repeatedly transgressed the lines lawmakers drew to demarcate colonial sovereignty and control; confounding attempts to enclose both people and animals inside a legal frame. She also explores how; to possess the land; colonizers had to find new ways to contain animals without destroying the wildness that made those creatures valuable to English settler societies in the first place. Offering fresh perspectives on colonial; legal; environmental; and Native American history; Wild by Nature reenvisions the familiar stories of early America as animal tales.
#2527205 in Books John David Hoptak 2004-05-27Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .37 x 6.00l; .50 #File Name: 1418414093148 pagesFirst In Defense Of The Union
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy CustomerIt was exactly the information I was looking. Very readable.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. A must readBy Joanne M. KingExcellent book! Having a family member serve as a First Defender made it an amazing read!4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Book SummaryBy A CustomerWhen their nation called . . .These men were the first to respond . . . Following the attack on Fort Sumter; President Abraham Lincoln; now faced the greatest crisis to ever befall the young American nation; issued a proclamation calling upon 75;000 Northern volunteers to suppress the hostile Southern rebellion. Throughout Northern towns and cities thousands of men; young and old; left home and family to begin their journey as American soldiers. Among the first to respond were five companies of volunteer militia from the Pennsylvania counties of Schuylkill; Berks; Lehigh; and Mifflin. Within a few days; these companies; numbering just over five hundred men; marched into Washington and into history as the very first troops to reach the capital following the start of the American Civil War. Now; for the first time since 1910; the story of these five "First Defender" companies is told. From their enlistment into service to their harrowing march through the city of Baltimore and through their three-month term of service; First in Defense of the Union traces the history of these companies by relying largely upon the soldiers' letters and diaries. With First in Defense of the Union; Hoptak dramatically brings the story of these five companies vividly to life; and commands attention to their distinguished and illustrious place in American History.
