James Madison, the South, and the Trans-Appalachian West, 1783–1803

This study examines the strong cultural and political bonds between the American South and trans-Appalachian West and argues that the strong relationship had its origins in the work of far-sighted Southerners in the two decades following the American Revolution.

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The strong relationship that historians have described between the South and the trans-Appalachian West in the early nineteenth century had its origins in the twenty-year period after the American Revolution when a group of far-sighted southerners, with James Madison in the forefront, worked to form a political bond between the two regions. While many historians have taken this close relationship for granted or have dismissed it as a natural product of cultural similarities, strong family bonds and slavery being just two, it was built deliberately by a handful of forward-looking southerners with hard work and dedication. Jeffrey A. Zemler carefully analyzes the development of this bond and the history of these two regions during this twenty-year period, which is far more complicated than historians have imagined or described.