American Environments to 1893 – Page 7

March 16, 2014

Ideas Have Consequences

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After reading Lisa Brady’s War Upon the Land, it’s hard to believe this statue of William Tecumseh Sherman was installed in Central Park in 1903.

Aside from that, I think the blog posts so far show an interesting engagement with Brady’s definition of nature. Ian and Sean helpfully point out why it may be limiting to exclude humans from a definition of nature. I agree with them on a theoretical level. But on the practical level of writing and thinking about environmental history, it makes it easier if we define nature as Brady does: “the nonhuman physical environment in its constituent parts or as a larger whole” (13). But maybe easier isn’t better.

Brady’s notion of “landscape” is a helpful way to think about about how humans shape the environment. So much of Brady’s book deals with designing and manipulating nature that her idea of landscape as “shaped land, land modified for permanent human occupation, for dwelling, agriculture, manufacturing, government, worship, and for pleasure” is useful because it allows for human alteration and usage of the land as a reasonable, and not a negative, process (13).

Brady mentions the proliferation of weeds as one of the consequences of Union armies marching through the South (131). This mention of weeds reminded me of Crosby’s book, when he points out that weeds are among the first plants to populate an area after it has been destroyed. Those weeds make way for longer-lasting plants. This means that, perhaps if we take a larger view of the environmental consequences of the Civil War (as Crosby takes a very wide view of ecological history in his book), the results are less dismal. The combination of the destruction of the land and the dismantling of the institution of slavery, though, spelled doom for the Southern way of life and ensured that the South could not return to how it was before the war (134). Even taking a larger view of history could not help return the South to its previous agroecosystem.

I also appreciated how Brady depicted nature as a historical agent insofar as it has “power to shape human decisions” (6). Brady relied on nineteenth-century Northern ideas about nature as an entity that was able to be conquered, civilized, and improved. Those ideas were the driving force in the book. I think the ideas themselves, carried through by the agents of Union generals (many of whom were trained as engineers at West point) helped bring about the destruction of Southern landscapes. For Brady, these ideas had consequences in the hands of Union generals and their massive armies.

March 16, 2014

Nature: Whose Side Are You On?

I thought one of the most intriguing aspects of Lisa M. Brady’s War Upon the Land was her depiction of General Sherman’s famed march through Georgia and the Carolinas. Growing up I heard a lot about Sherman’s destructive march from Atlanta to Savannah, including many comparisons ending with “like Sherman went through Georgia.” That said, none of my classes ever delved beneath the surface of Sherman’s Civil War-defining march. I really enjoyed the varying eyewitness perspectives that Brady provided on Sherman’s march, including Union, Confederate, and civilian accounts of the destruction. I was not surprised that the Union and Confederate soldiers disagreed over the morality of Sherman’s tactics, but I was fascinated by Brady’s assertion that the morality dispute could be traced back to the Roman military in Britain in 84 AD (p. 127). In a sense, this dispute hinges largely on whether people are considered to exist in nature or separate from it–a discussion we have had several times already. If humans exist in nature, then the argument can be made that the destruction of the land is acceptable since, by extension, the land is associated with the people. If humans exist outside of nature, however, then attacking the land would seem to be the equivalent of assailing an innocent bystander. During our in-class discussions we have failed to reach a consensus on the relationship between humans and nature, and this may indicate why from the time of the Romans through the Civil War and even into the present day people still cannot agree on the morality of land destruction during war.

Wherever one sides on this issue, the regenerative power of nature cannot be denied. Even though many soldiers documented the destruction of the land in Georgia and the Shenandoah Valley, immediately following the war many Southerners returned to their land and set to work restoring some resemblance of the agricultural order that existed before the war. Brady writes about Randolph Barton, who returned home to the Shenandoah Valley in 1865 and “his sword was turned into a pruning hook” (p. 133). The Confederates could not afford to dwell upon their defeat, as they relied upon the land for their livelihood. As a result, the land healed much quicker than most soldiers involved in the war ever imagined.

When reading Brady’s book, I agree with Manish that nature needs to be understood as its own person. Throughout her work, Brady details the importance of the landscape in terms of Confederate defenses at cities such as Vicksburg and Savannah. Likewise, Brady details the difficulties Sherman’s army faced traveling through South Carolina due to the many swamps and marshy areas. Furthermore, the diseases transmitted by mosquitoes during the hot summer months inflicted a great toll on the Union forces throughout the war. Because of the impact of nature on the Civil War, it is very helpful to think of nature as a third party in the war–one without a rooting interest. At different times during the war nature seemed to favor both the Union and the Confederacy, but it was really just an uninterested third party acting on whatever army it came into contact with.

March 16, 2014

Nature’s Role in Warfare

In War Upon the Land, Lisa Brady looks at the way nature played an active role in the Civil War, both in how it drove strategy on both sides and was often a foe in its own ride to both the Union and Confederacy. She does this in tight, thorough analyses of nature’s role in four different theaters of the Civil War, with each getting its own chapter. For example, as Ian covers in his post, Brady spends a chapter detailing how a desire to control nature determined much of General William Sherman’s strategy in his famous March to the Sea, as well as the challenges brought on by natural agents such as disease and weather. In another chapter, Brady looks at how Union troops in the Shenandoah Valley, led by Philip Sheridan, ravaged the landscape of what Brady calls the “granary of the confederacy.” (73) The strategy originated from Ulysses S. Grant, who ordered that resources in the Shenandoah Valley such as crops, farms, and mills be destroyed in order to weaken the Confederacy. (78) Grant’s strategy paid off in 1864 when he gave control of the area’s forces to Philip Sheridan, a young general who agreed with Grant on the importance of destroying enemy resources in the region. Brady quotes Sheridan as saying that the resource rich territory of the Shenandoah Valley was “a factor of great importance,” showing that Sheridan’s strategy was directly influenced by the region’s natural features. (79) Finally, Brady also points out how ruthless Sheridan was in implementing his strategy, quoting him as saying that he wanted the area to remain a “barren waste” for as long as the war lasted, which of course meant continued hardship for Confederate civilians in the area. (80)

In my Ethics and Warfare class, we have spent some time debating strategies such as Grant and Sherman’s that destroy enemy resources in such a way that the the opposition’s civilians must suffer. We learned that military leaders and ethicists of the Civil War era generally accepted the idea that it was ethically acceptable for civilians of an opposing state to be made to feel the hardships of war, and that therefore such strategies were permissible. I believe that looking at these strategies with a focus toward nature and ecology adds another wrinkle to the moral debates regarding those strategies. In this class, we often look at our subjects of study asking the question of “is this natural” or “was this a natural occurrence.” Therefore, my question is would we consider strategies like enemy crop destruction natural, given that they are driven by an understanding of the importance that control over nature (in the form of agriculture) plays in military strategy. One could argue that it is therefore inevitable in military conflict that opposing forces will mar the landscape in ways to make it less useful for the enemy. However, does that sense of inevitability mean it is morally acceptable to destroy crops when doing so will clearly harm enemy non-combatants? I enjoyed the chapter on Sheridan, as well as Brady’s book as a whole, because it prompts these kinds of tough questions and provides an interesting look at how nature has affected into military history.

March 16, 2014

Nature as a separate entity in “War Upon the Land”

Lisa Brady provides a unique perspective on the Civil War with her environmental history War Upon the Land, as she effectively portrays the importance of the landscape during the Civil War as well as how both the Union and Confederacy approached the environment. However, while her argument is still convincing, I disagree with how she defines nature as a completely separate entity from human society. In her eyes (as Manish noted) nature no longer exists once altered by humans, and that once human’s affect nature it becomes an “agroecosystem.” Brady’s definition of nature doesn’t change her argument all too much, as the argument about the control of nature of the North and the coexistence of nature of the South are unaffected, yet as it pertains to this class, I can’t help but be thrown off by how she disregards humans as a part of nature.

As Manish wrote below, the different perceptions of wilderness were a key element to Brady’s work, and I agree with Manish’s assessment that the Union’s control over the landscape was a result of the industrialism in the North. I disagree that these attempted manipulations of the landscape were a bad thing, however, but instead believe that the North’s manipulation of nature was indicative of the changing landscape of the world and how human’s were playing a greater role within nature than they were previously. The South may have been in harmony with nature (if you consider them different entities), yet their society was reliant on the widespread production of products grown from the earth (tobacco, cotton, etc.) that were reliant on the archaic institution of slavery. Slavery is a part of human society, but as humans progressed and began realizing it was wrong in the 19^th century (evidenced by countries across Latin America abandoned the institution throughout the century, most of which abandoned it before the US), the rise of industrialism occurred at the same time. With the South’s coexisting with nature, as humans in rural society’s had done forever, they were also rooted in institutions like slavery. As humans began to make their mark on the environment with the growth of cities and technology, immoral institutions slowly have disbanded. I apologize as this paragraph has reached “rant status” so I’ll sum up my thoughts briefly: Brady seems to portray the South’s relationship with nature as a positive thing and the North’s approach to nature (and the toll it takes on the environment) as a negative, where I believe that humanity and nature go hand in hand, and as humans become more involved in nature, humanity has become more moral due to the greater communication and control of the landscape.

The Civil War was a battle between the developing North and the unchanging South, and the result of the war left the much of the Southern landscape in ruin. I believe that humanity is part of nature, and that the result of the war was just a further expansion of the urbanizing society. Brady’s work effectively pointed out how the landscape played a role in the War with the different sides, yet her portrayal and definition of nature still bothers me.

March 16, 2014

Lisa Brady’s War upon the Land is an excellent piece of environmental history which analyzes the various ways in which nature shaped the course of the Civil War, specifically when cast as the “enemy” of the Union Army. Brady notes from the start of her piece how another historian, Linda Nash, describes nature in a somewhat conscious manner, indicating that it has the power to shape human decisions (6). Throughout the piece, Brady references this idea through her analysis of military strategy, noting how the weather and environment of a region could significantly alter the army’s direction. One such instance of this is through her description of the Mississippi River as a great theatre for war. Due to the placement of the Mississippi within the confines of the United States and the importance of this waterway as a centerpiece for trade and travel, this area was destined to be a focal point which both armies lobbied to control (26). We see in this description how nature shaped the course of human action instead of humans themselves. As a result of this river being so important to trade and travel, the region for conflict was chosen by nature and not by military strategists. Though the leaders of both armies chose to attack/defend this region because of its importance, this was a predetermined decision based off the environment’s natural design.

Though the environment often shaped human decisions, Brady notes throughout the piece, but specifically in her chapter about Sherman’s March how actively humans fought to control it. In describing the tactics behind Sherman’s March, Brady states how its goal was to gain “control over the landscape,” specifically the natural aspects of the region (95). Yet, Brady also notes how nature was an incredibly hostile force towards either army, but specifically the Union forces in this situation. She notes how the “terrain, weather, and disease” were as threatening or more so than any force that Sherman’s army met on the field of battle (95). Through this perspective, Brady indicates two characteristics of nature and its relationship with humanity. First, like Nash did with her comments on nature shaping human decision, Brady places some human characteristics onto nature, as she casts it as an enemy to Sherman. Though not conscious like in Nash’s interpretation, Brady’s perspective describes nature as much more than a stagnant figure within human interactions.

Secondly, Brady indicates the power of nature against humanity, as she references it as stronger than any army Sherman faced. Nature’s ability to kill thousands with disease or disasters is significantly stronger than any bullet or cannon ball, as it remains an unrelenting force which cannot be killed. Brady references this seeming immortality of nature towards the end of her piece, which indicates humanity’s insignificant amount of power in relation to nature’s own. Quoting John Muir, Brady describes how even after all the natural devastation as a side-effect of war; nature continues to regenerate from the wastelands, thereby displaying its eternality (136-137). Though many people might argue that this does not happen today, we have noted in class how buildings are often taken over by nature within a few years, further indicating nature’s supremacy.

I completely agree with Manish’s points about nature being something beyond human control. As is clear through my previous comments about Sherman’s efforts to annihilate the southern landscape, no matter how much he destroyed, nature inevitably reclaimed its hold on the area, displaying its superiority to humanity. Though I agree with this definition, I believe it needs to be expanded to incorporate humans living in harmony with nature, as we have seen this theme exist in countless works this semester. Whether we agree with human ecological alteration or not, it is evident that humans have and will for the foreseeable future remain a part of the natural ecosystem of the world, indicating their place within it. As a result of this, though humans may not control nature, there exists a place within the “wilderness” for them to coexist with their surroundings, offering a different perspective than the more hierarchical relationship that Brady presents.

March 16, 2014

War Upon the Land: The Differing Perceptions of Nature by the North and the South

There can be no doubt that wilderness played a very important role in the American Civil War. Lisa M. Brady’s War Upon the Land focuses on nature’s role in the conflict and the differing conceptions of nature by the North and the South. In order to understand this difference a definition of nature is needed. Brady utilizes Steven Stole’s definition in her narrative. Wilderness is “defined places and times when humans did not yet control their environment or where they had lost control.” This definition is similar to one that Brandon put forward in his post when analyzing the perspectives presented in Robert Marshall’s essay. “The Problem of the Wilderness,” is an area without permanent inhabitants, impossible to cross by mechanical means, and so vast that a person attempting to cross it must sleep out. In short, the wilderness is an escape from civilization.”

Both these definitions are very similar in that they portray nature as something that is separate from human control. While humans can interact with nature they cannot ever tame it. For my purposes I see nature as its own person. When considering the Civil War there is the Union and the Confederacy but I believe that nature/ wilderness is a third party that played an integral role in the struggle. This would be an idea that Brady would appear to agree with. Nature would fill a role similar to American Indians during the Revolutionary War, a group that had their own interests separate from the two main parties.

What I believe to be one of Brady’s most important arguments is the idea that the North and the South had dramatically different perceptions of wilderness and this reflected each regions placed importance on the agriculture and the land in general. For the Union Army, led by General Sherman, the land was something that was destined to be tamed and controlled. This mindset was reflected throughtout the war with Grant’s army and their refusal to abide by the limitations that nature placed. “Even more than reenvisioning the landscape in military terms, however, Sherman’s operations were predicated on gaining control over the landscape. Control- over nature, labor, and territory- formed the basis of the campaign.” (95) In some ways this mindset could be the result of northern industrialism where every aspect of the culture was controlled and able to be manipulated. The land itself was very much undervalued and the concepts of civilization led many to see anything “uncivilized” as an opportunity to civilize and demonstrate industrial strength over agriculture. Could this also be a reflection of Union exceptionalism?

On the other side the Southern states reliance on the land led to a very different relationship with nature. They did not see it as something that simply could be controlled. Their close interactions with nature made them understand that the best benefits could be contrived when living in harmony with nature instead of trying to overcome it. Those living in Vicksburg understood this idea. Where the Union Army tried to change the Mississippi River’s flow, the confederates understood that this was impossible and that was a major reason why Vicksburg was located where it was. The city of Savannah was another city that was built in harmony with nature. As a result nature provided the city many natural defenses that allowed the confederates to hold out for a considerable amount of time.

It is clear that the north and the south held very different perceptions on nature. Unfortunately, the North prevailed through their destruction of the land. The south was greatly devastetd for their reliance on nature was so great that they had failed to establish indpendent means for survival. Still despite the North’s victory, the Union still failed to understand the true identity of nature. While protectionism grew in the later part of the 19th century, most in the north never understood the benefits of living with nature instead of trying to isolate it through a paternalist mindset. In some ways this failure to understand coexistence may have set the US on the path of greater environmental destruction through unsustainable means being justified by the fact that a limited part of nature was being protected.

March 10, 2014

Collective Memory of the Frontier

The study of memory and its effects on people is becoming a rapidly growing field in the Historical community. Specifically, the study of ‘collective memory’ is becoming much more prominent. The keystone work on this subject is written by a French philosopher named Maurice Hawlbachs. His thesis is that a culture or a society can actually have a group memory that is dependent on the framework in which the society is constructed. He argues that society is full of not just individual memories, but a separate collective memory. Hawlbachs looks particularly about how societies remember episodes of tragedy and trauma. This memory is crucial in forming a national identity.

I believe this thesis can be used to add to Richard Slotkin’s chapter on Myth and Historical Memory. In fact, I believe that you can use Hawlbachs thesis in conjunction with Frederick Jackson Turner’s frontier thesis to help explain why Custer’s Last Stand is mythologized so much in our culture. The Myth of the Frontier is the longest living American myth according to Slotkin. I believe the Frontier Thesis is back this argument up. The ideological underpinnings of the frontier such as “manifest destiny” and “social Darwinism” have helped lay the frameworks for the framework of our culture. Slotkin points to the “laws of capitalist competition” and the system of supply and demand as direct results of the Myth of the Frontier. These ideologies don’t just effect the construction of our society, they also effect our collective memory.

The way we remember Custer’s Last Stand is crucial to our national identity not only because it was fought against Indians, but because it was fought in the new territory of Montana. I believe the environment that the battle was fought in is just as important as the people it was fought against. The fact that the battle took lace in what was considered the frontier at the time is probably what made this such a lasting memory and such an important part of shaping our national identity. I also believe that the time period is another important factor. Custer’s Last Stand occurred right at the end of the Reconstruction period. The country was desperately trying to find a new nationally identity after the devastation of the Civil War. Having a shared memory that all Americans could draw on had to help in this process. Slotkin argues that a term like “last stand” of “frontier” are not historical references. Rather they are metaphors that implicitly connect the events or places they are describing to a value system. In this sense, Custer last Stand is more than just a historical event because of the way we remember it as a nation.

This chapter also compliments Ian’s post on the Literature of the Environment. Ian’s discussion is very similar to mine about how people remember and wrote about their travels on the frontier. There are different individual narratives and reasons for each person who traveled to the frontier. However, as a collective memory, we often just attribute the same reasons for everyone such as manifest destiny. Slotkin’s work ultimately shows the power and the danger of collective memory.

March 10, 2014

The Fatal Flaw of The Fatal Environment

After reading Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment, I was impressed but unconvinced with Slotkin’s concept of the “Frontier Myth.” While Slotkin provides an extremely thorough examination of how the “myth” of the frontier has been molded to explain Westward expansion, I think the breadth of his work makes some parts of his narrative superfluous.

Much like Ian, I found Slotkin’s Part III – “The Metropolis vs. The Frontier” to be one of his most effective sections. I would like to add to Ian’s analysis that while Slotkin argues that “humanity does in fact exist in nature,” I think Slotkin also believes that in the minds of nineteenth century American industrialists, humans were very separate from nature (iasolcz). This is seen in “The Language of the Frontier Myth” when Slotkin discusses the dispossession of Native Americans. While arguing that Indians were human despite white industrialist ideas that assumed otherwise, Slotkin outlines nature as something “primarily inhuman” (79). He asserts that throughout the Indian wars and American industrialization, the myth emerged that an inherent struggle existed between this inhuman realm and that of human “civilization,” and that it was this conflict that fueled tensions during Westward expansion (79).

Additionally, Part III set the framework for the remainder of Slotkin’s narrative by juxtaposing both perceptions of the frontier in popular culture – as found in many of Cooper’s novels – and the expansion of democracy and politics to the West with the idea of a separate, civilized “Metropolis” that dominated American culture (109-110). I thought this section was particularly interesting because it covered similar topics to our previous readings, particularly Turner’s “Frontier Thesis.” Unlike Turner, however, Slotkin emphasizes the expansion of the frontier as a result of the specific economic, political, and national concerns that emerged within the Metropolis. For example, he ties the spread over the frontier in the 1840s to the increased prevalence of “‘Jacksonian’ ideology” in the early nineteenth century (114).

Slotkin’s section on the railroad also relates to our reading of William Cronon and the development of Chicago in Nature’s Metropolis. Both Slotkin and Cronon emphasize the importance of human actors in bringing change to the environment. They also argue that the development of the railroad and the opening of the frontier was a direct result of the injection of capitalist ideals into the economy –this brings us back to Cronon’s “geography of capitalism” (15, 26). Like Slotkin notes, railroads made access to “nodes of superabundance” increasingly easy (211). However, Slotkin also seems to take Cronon’s analysis one step further and questions whether capitalism might have molded the perception of the railroad opening the frontier. While questions like this are certainly intriguing, this kind of curiosity from Slotkin ultimately turned me away from his narrative. I think these questions detracted too much from an environmental history and instead created a massive study in historical psychology. This was only furthered when Slotkin included his chapters on George Custer. Although the story of Custer’s Last Stand was an effective lens to introduce perceptions of the frontier in the nineteenth century, Slotkin’s perpetuation of the hero myth throughout the book seemed to be a thoughtful, but unnecessary addition to his main argument.

March 9, 2014

The Fatal Environment: White Supremacy and Myth

Myth and history are not mutually exclusive. Richard Slotkin provides his own definition of myth in The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890. “Myths are stories, drawn from history, that have acquired through usage over many generations a symbolizing function that is central to the cultural functioning of the society that produces them,” writes Slotkin. (16) His work rests on the foundation that myth is an essential part of history, shaping, influencing, and molding a culture’s perception of its own history and past. Slotkin’s main thesis revolves around the idea that the glorified myth of the frontier on the eve of the industrial age was in fact a warped vision of the true history of the frontier.

I almost found Slotkin’s argument, though believable, to be repetitive. He argues that the history of the frontier was not a completely romanticized dream, but a story about white supremacy and racial superiority. The doctrine adopted to white man’s treatment of the West revolved around converting savages and suppressing their otherness. Frontier ideology, epitomized by James Fenimore Cooper, “centered on the representation of the history of American development as the confrontation between warring races, Indian and white.” (100) Slotkin then goes on to explain, “In the triumph of the white and the vanishing of the red, the progress of civilization is achieved, in both moral and material terms.” (100) White Americans viewed the conquering of the Indian in the West as an ultimate conquer over nature, for Americans regarded the Indians as an integral part of nature and the wilderness itself. I agree with Ian that “in breaking down Slotkin’s definition, we can see his position in that humanity does in fact exist in nature, as human heroics are allowed to tread there.” In class, we often discuss the possibility that mankind and their workings are as much a part of nature as any other animal. Looking through a twenty-first century lens, I could find support in Slotkin’s work that man is in fact a part of nature and the wilderness. Looking through a nineteenth century looking-glass, however, it might have been hard to consider Native American Indians as “mankind” when they were so often looked upon as savages.

Slotkin’s discussion on the conquering of nature reminds me of different aspects of human nature. Men are afraid of defeat, afraid of destruction. When white Americans sought a controlled nature and suppression of the Indian race, it was due to their fear of the “Custer Complex.” This complex was based off of the drive to conquer men and nature at any cost. Americans feared a defeat similar to the defeat of General George Custer by the Sioux. They also used Custer’s defeat as justification to rid of the Indian population to “protect or avenge the imperiled female.” (377) Slotkin argues that Custer’s defeat became a prominent legend of American West mythology. (14) Not only did the loss become a part of American myth and legend, but also placed itself within a conversation of gender and racial discrimination. Slotkin’s literary and historical approach in his work present interesting arguments in a somewhat unusual way, but his thesis does not extensively add to a new historical argument about white supremacy and oppression.

March 9, 2014

The Flawed Methodology with Mythological History

Richard Slotkin’s The Fatal Environment is a study of the myth of the American frontier, as Slotkin analyzes the myth extensively using 19^th century literature, setting the frontier up as a divider between Metropolises and the native wilderness. The study is convincing enough, but Slotkin runs into the same issue that any historian has when studying a cultural myth: how to prove that the myth had an impact over an entire culture rather than specific sections of society.

This is a problem I encountered while writing my thesis last semester. I attempted to argue that the collapse of the mythological aspect of baseball with the reveal that the Yankee hero Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic and a womanizer, that that helped propel the festering cynicism in the 1960s that began with the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations as well as the Vietnam War. As I began researching, I immediately regretted my undertaking, as proving the cultural impact that a myth has over society is not easy. Relative to my study, I tried to argue that because of baseball’s place in American culture, the collapse of the mythology affected the greater American public, yet clearly there were Americans who could care less about baseball, or who could care less about the mythological aspects of the game. For Slotkin, his argument is solid and easy to accept as fact, yet it is also easily contestable because of how he uses literature as representative of American culture. This undertaking is impossible to do completely, as there were sections of society who had no interest in what was happening in the west (and as Henry pointed out, who could not read), yet Slotkin claims that with the literature, the frontier mythology is encompassing of American culture.

This point is reaffirmed in Henry’s below post, as he concurs that just a snapshot of a culture cannot interpret the national consciousness of America. I also did not consider the era, as Henry smartly points out the illiteracy in America made the novels and stories of the time even less influential, further weakening Slotkin’s contention.

Unfortunately for Slotkin, if he lessened his claim and stated instead that the literature had some influence, his argument becomes weak, yet because his claim is encompassing, it is currently flawed. Slotkin does a good job of providing as much evidence as possible, but regardless of how many stories supported his argument, someone could still say that assuming that the frontier mythology represented the whole nation’s consciousness is an over-the-top claim.

While flawed in its methodology, looking past these concerns I found the work rather convincing, and its approach as an environmental history intriguing. Slotkin adds an interesting wrinkle to the definition of nature, as he creates a polarizing distinction between the wilderness full of savage Indians and the metropolis expanding into the wilderness. While creating the distinction, as Ian states below it allows for male heroics within nature, therefore allowing humans as actors within nature.