PREFACE to the Synoptic Hypertext of Virgin Land

HYPER-CONTEXTS

I. A Highway to the Pacific: Thomas Jefferson and the Far West

II. Passage to India: Thomas Hart Benton and Asa Whitney

III. The Untransacted Destiny: William Gilpin

IV. Walt Whitman and Manifest Destiny

V. Daniel Boone: Empire Builder or Philosopher of Primitivism?

VI. Leatherstocking and the Problem of Social Order

VII. The Innocence of and Wildness of Nature: Charles W. Webber and Others

VIII. The Mountain Man as Western Hero: Kit Carson

IX. The Western Hero in the Dime Novel:

I. From Seth Jones to Deadwood Dick

II. Buffalo Bill and Buck Taylor

X. The Dime Novel Heroine

XI. The Garden of the World and American Agrarianism

XII. The Yeoman and the Fee-Simple Empire

XIII. The South and the Myth of the Garden

XIV. The New Calculus of Western Energies

XV. The Agrarian Utopia in Politics: The Homestead Act

XVI. The Garden and the Desert

XVII. The Empire Redivivus

XVIII. Failure of the Agrarian Utopia

XIX. The Myth of the Garden and Reform of the Land System

XX. The Garden as Safety Valve

XXI. The Agricultural West in Literature:

I. Cooper and the Stages of Society

II. From Caroline Kirkland to Hamlin Garland

XXII. The Myth of the Garden and Turner's Frontier Hypothesis