Pioneers of the Old Southwest

In 1912, Theodore Roosevelt addressed the American Historical Association to call for American history to be written as compelling stories of literary quality. Editor Allen Johnson of Yale University responded by publishing the Chronicles of America series: 50 succinct volumes on regional and thematic American history. These books, intended for secondary schools and college students, are expository works of American history composed by competent historians in the 1920's, well before the special pleading and upending of social norms typical of histories after 1970. This series is focused on the mainstream of American political life and leadership from its initial volumes on Native Americans and European colonists to its final volumes on Woodrow Wilson, Canada, and the Hispanic Republics to our South. This narrative of the pioneers of Appalachia is a dramatic tale of the first Anglo-Americans in the Old Southeast. Led by Daniel Boone, these settlers and adventurers staked claims against the French and the Indian Nations, fought the Loyalist element during the Revolution, and worked to plant the institutions of civilization in the wild mountains of the frontier. Constance Skinner, a Canadian historian and novelist, is best known for conceiving and editing the Rivers of America: a collection of histories focused on American waterways. This work has been formatted and reprinted for Tall Men Books. It is not a facsimile reprint.