Race relations undoubtedly shaped the development of the United States. Much of the nation's early history hinges on the American construction of racial identity. Constitutional recognition of human chattel reinforced the subordination and dehumanization of people of African descent during the founding of the New Republic. "King Cotton" further solidified American racial attitudes during the 19th century. Whites Generally occupied a superior station in life relative to blacks by sheer virtue of skin color by the start of the American Civil War. Ironically, sectional and philosophical divisions among some white Americans led to a reduction in the divisions between blacks and whites. Or did they? Race to the Frontier provides readers with an innovative approach to understanding how race and racism shaped life along the western frontier following the Civil War.

John V. H. Dippel's alternative view of westward expansion suggests that northern and midwestern whites who refused to accept blacks as equals migrated westward mainly to avoid effects of black inmigration. According to Dippel, "racial factors were inextricably bound up with the economic well being of these white pioneers ... and, therefore, did contribute significantly to their decisions to migrate and influence the social and political outlook that took hold on the frontier" (p. 5). Dippel supports his conclusion by tracing the nation's race problem from the tidewater region of the Virginia Colony to the Pacific territories. According to Dippel, the colonial period marked the start of labor competition between blacks and poor whites. Some impoverished Europeans migrated to Virginia as indentured servants. The prospect of working off their debts for passage, and acquiring land, made the hardship of Jamestown worth the risk. The tobacco crop breathed new life into the settlement. Planters prospered and expanded their landholdings whenever possible. As the wealth of planters increased, so did their power. Soon planters distanced themselves from lowly whites relegated to working the land as laborers. After a while, the legal codes and social customs resembled the feudal systems of Europe. Eventually, prudent tobacco planters considered alternative labor sources to offset fluctuating tobacco prices. According to Dippel, "Black slaves cost less to keep than any other workers and thus offered planters the best hope of remaining solvent when hard times returned" (p. 21).

By 1650, most blacks arrived in Virginia as slaves. Throughout the 1700s and 1800s slaves were the bane of yeoman and poor whites. Some whites opted to move farther inland for a fresh start in the Piedmont area. "If they were going to start families and become economically independent, these colonists now had very little chance except by leaving the region, with hopes of making a living in the back country as yeoman farmers, tenants, craftsmen, or day laborers" (p. 46). A motley mix of freed slaves and Scottish, Irish, German and English immigrants drifted into the interior in search of uninhabited territory along the frontier prior to the demarcation of property and issuance of property deeds. Land disputes in the Tennessee Valley displaced a significant portion of the whites who had laid claim to frontier lands prematurely. Others found the peculiar institution already firmly entrenched in the most fertile areas deeply disturbing. While non-planter elite generally accepted the social stratification among whites, the slave element continued to serve as a source of tension in the backcountry. Eventually, the “relentless spread of the Southern plantation system would once again make their way of life unsustainable %u2014 and drive them further west” (p. 51).

The Revolutionary War left an indelible impression on the country. Above all, the idea of freedom took on a new meaning. No longer was it just an abstract ideal. The brave men and women responsible for collectively ousting the British looked to both the Old Southwest and the Old Northwest in pursuit of constitutional guarantees to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Although land in the South was cheaper, the land to the North appreciated considerably quicker. It is not surprising that many still struggling to find their niche chose areas uninhabited by blacks. “Racially prejudiced and economically insecure whites did not anticipate that Ohio would attract large numbers of blacks” (p. 149).

While free states created by the Northwest Ordinance attracted only a minuscule number of free blacks and runaways, the mere presence of them continued to invoke ill will among the dominant white population in the Ohio River Valley during the mid 1800s. Southern and northern whites carried their racial biases with them into the Midwest. Their politicians instituted legal measures to relegate free blacks to second-class members of society and controlled the flow of runaways. None proved sufficient. According to Dippel, “The growing free black population had superseded slavery as the most explosive racial issue the nation faced” (p. 159). Some thought colonization might solve the problem. During the first half of the 19th century, notable national figures such as Thomas Jefferson and Henry Clay endorsed colonization schemes to rid the country of the black race. Only the American Civil War quieted calls for this option. In the absence of effective policies that eliminated free blacks, some whites resorted to intimidation and violence. Others resorted to relocating. Once again, the western frontier became the object of settlers seeking solace and economic security strictly among whites. Many white residents of the Ohio River valley reassembled in Missouri, Iowa, and Kansas. Kentuckians led the way among southerners. European immigrants also flocked to cheap land out west prior to the economic panic of 1893. Even wealthy whites went westward in search of new business ventures and better land. Typically they fared best. “In the main, only speculators and prosperous planters could afford ... large tracts” (p. 180). In Missouri, slavery posed very little threat to the “plain folk:” Things were different there. For instance, Missouri slave holders rarely owned more than three slaves. Blacks posed little labor competition. Therefore, settlers achieved some degree of success there, despite it being a slave state. Dippel acknowledges that Missouri is especially significant for its impact on race relations in the latter half of the 19th century. The debate over whether it should be a free or slave state revealed the major divisions that split the Union. According to Dippel, “The Missouri Compromise had ... seminal significance in shaping the sectional rivalries that led to the Civil War” (p. 205). Northerners, abolitionists, and Republicans all expressed concerns over the inalienable rights of blacks. Some were more concerned about the black population overwhelming free states. Amalgamation and miscegenation were their biggest concerns. Whites believed that “blacks not only endangered white morals, but also undermined the white work ethic upon which the future development and growth of the United States depended” (pp. 206-207). The Free Soil Party politicized these concerns. State and local candidates effectively endorsed policies of racially exclusive westward expansion. The Missourian Peter Hardeman Burnett is among the most notable frontiersmen who actively encouraged “white flight” westward. As a resident of Oregon and then governor of California, Burnett campaigned tirelessly to encourage the westward migration of whites. According to Dippel, Burnett believed that “the Oregon territory was the last best hope for poor whites like him to build prosperous lives free from competition from and %u2018degradation%u2019 by blacks” (p. 271). This enchanting message of anti-black rhetoric and opposition to the expansion of slave territory reinforced the racial attitudes of many frontiersmen during the latter half of the 19th century. Abraham Lincoln recognized these fears. Dippel's analysis of Lincoln's bid for Pennsylvania Avenue illustrates how his view of blacks differed little from that of Henry Clay and other frontiersmen. Lincoln astutely observed the rising popularity of the Free Soil Party. In an effort to remain a politically viable presidential candidate, Lincoln had no choice but to fuse the Republican Party%u2019s antislavery plan with the idea of limiting land expansion to whites. Southerners viewed his presidential election as the final affront to the peculiar institution. Lincoln's decision to end slavery did not end racial prejudice. Hostile whites occasionally used violence to deter black settlement in the butternut states. For instance, the arrival of former slaves resulted in rioting in New Albany Indiana. Freedmen received constitutional protection, but they were not viewed as equals, nor were they desirable as neighbors or coworkers. Dippel's epilogue notes how inequality, racism, and violent conflicts all persisted at the conclusion of the 19th century.

Dippel's quantitative study of black in­migration suggests that the reaction of whites who felt compelled to relocate along the frontier was really much ado about nothing. In reality, relatively few blacks migrated northward following the Civil War. “Between 1860-1880, the free black population in 15 states located in the northeastern and north central sections of the United States rose only by 200,000.... [O]ver this 20­year period it only rose from 1.2 percent of the total [population of blacks in the Northern States] to 1.5 percent.... 92 percent of them were to be found in the former slave states of Texas, Missouri, and Arkansas” (pp. 302-303). These figures support the conclusion that misconceptions about blacks often influenced the behavior of whites during the 19th century. In reality, the relatively small population of blacks who exercised their new freedom by leaving the South posed very little threat to whites, economically, socially or politically. Such unwarranted concerns make about as much sense as the stereotypes and racial prejudice blacks endured during this period.

When viewed from this perspective, it is highly plausible that some whites from this era actually fled northern and Midwestern states when confronted with the idea of being surrounded and overrun by a wretched race of subordinates. Dippel's eloquent writing is both entertaining and informative. Impeccable research and historical analysis thoroughly support his conclusion that the “consistent pattern of white dispersal across the United States reveals an effort to achieve ... a cohesive, homogeneous, and exclusive society. From colonial days onward, this impulse to flee from a far more complicated racial reality has been an integral, if largely unacknowledged, aspect of the American dream” (p. 306).

He makes excellent use of memoirs, newspapers, court records, legislative debates, and special collections. As a bonus, he puts “white flight” westward in perspective by drawing heavily upon a detailed synthesis of early American history prior to 1877. Undoubtedly, one will fully enjoy reading this book, if one is remotely interested in early American race relations, politics, geographic expansion, slavery, migration, and immigration.

One associates "white flight" with suburban expansion and central city decay after World War II. John Dippel extends the term spatially and temporally to create an explanatory framework for the middle stream of east-to-west migration in American history. Opportunity pulled poor and middling white farmers westward, to be sure, but slavery and the problematic pres­ence of free blacks pushed them as well.

In other words, westward movement was not so much an expansion as a "withdrawal from the complexi­ties of a biracial world." It was not an advance, but rather "a retreat in both time and space" (p. 5). Slavery and black people followed each re-treat; in turn, whites sought refuge  farther west. The central thesis of the book is found on page 7: "Settlement of the West turned out to be not an antidote to the problem of race, but a battleground for its resolution."recreated on the frontier, but not quite in the way Frederick Jackson Turner theorized.­­ American civilization was, indeed, continuously

Race and frontier are timeworn tropes in American historiography. Seldom have they been combined in such detail in so many locales. While this book will not cause the same impact as Richard White's The Middle Ground (1991), William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis (1991), or Annette Kolodny's The Land Before Her (1984) in terms of the frontier and West, it does add to our picture of the comprehensiveness of race as a category of analysis.

The story Dippel tells stretches from tide-wa­ter Virginia to Oregon, from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. The story is not about New England, the Middle Colonies, or the southern cotton frontier. Dippel begins with Jamestown, the need for labor to grow tobacco, the experimentation with indentures and their gradual replacement with chattel slaves, Bacon's Rebellion, miscegenation laws, and other ground well plowed by Edmund Morgan in American Slavery, American Freedom (1975) and Rhys Isaac in The Transformation of Virginia (1982). Late in the first chapter, Dippel shows how poor whites moved inland and upland to escape a slave society with which they found it difficult to compete, but also to create a "racial sanctu­ary" in the Piedmont (p. 38).

Coastal Virginia became an "African colony" (pp. 44-45), causing about 250,000 whites to vacate the Chesapeake between 1790 and 1820, joining the Scotch%u2011Irish moving south from western Pennsylvania. Slavery also moved west, forcing "plain folk" farmers and white laborers even farther west in a quest for freedom from the intertwined hierar­chies of race and class (p. 51). The racial frontier moved into the trans-Appalachian region, where battles over slavery and black labor were fought in the early 1790s in the construction of Kentucky's state constitution. Slavery won, and poor whites moved north across the Ohio River into the Old Northwest, still seeking escape.

Dippel tracks these patterns of getaway and catching up across the Butternut regions of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, into Missouri, and on to Oregon. Dippel's evidence is compelling, in gripping narratives such as the one about Abraham Lincoln's family, in statistics and demographics, and in legal and constitutional conflicts. By the 1820s, for example, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois had all banned any future enslavement of blacks and pursued a "whites only" goal by discouraging black in-migration and inducing black residents to leave. The failure to exclude blacks led to new white migrations, a sort of continuous "white exo­dus" to black-free zones (p. 138).

Missouri became a critical test case in the desire to create a racially homogeneous region in the West. Westerners tended to be both antislavery and antiblack, and the aftermath of the Missouri Compromise led white residents to regard Oregon as their next chance for a white Garden of Eden. Here whites finally succeeded, passing a series of laws to preserve the region as a white enclave, including the ex­clusion of blacks from landownership. Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton thought Oregon should be "clean of negroes" (p. 267). By 1870 there were only 318 blacks and mulattoes in the state; in 2000 only 1.6 percent of Oregon's popu­lation was black.

John V. H. Dippel provocatively deploys the modern decampment of whites to the suburbs as an organizing metaphor for his argument that the desire to distance themselves from African Americans motivated successive waves of white "plain folk" to relocate ever farther westward. At the argument’s core is a demographic genealogy of Free Soil ideology, the northern antebellum vision of the Mid-west and trans-Mississippi territories as the dominion of free white farmers, whose material opportunities would be maximized and labor ennobled by the absence of slavery. Many Free Soilers were unapologetically racist, ascribing the degradations of slavery as inherent characteristics of all African Americans. . . .

Dippel identifies the seeds of Free Soil prejudice in seventeenth-century Virginia and follows white nonslaveholding southerners who planted those seeds in frontier zones from the Virginia Piedmont all the way to Oregon and California. Rather than analyze race as a historically contingent cultural construct, he treats it as an essentially ingrained hatred from the time of Nathaniel Bacon’s insurgency to Abraham Lincoln’s ascendancy. In this formulation, white migrants despised blacks and had no desire to share either the unregulated freedom of frontier zones or the fruits of the subsequent rural economy.

Dippel’s case for racist continuity relies on census data which indicates impressive numbers of white Virginians, Kentuckians, and their descendants residing in the southern tier of the Old Northwest (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois), as well as in Missouri and subsequent western territories. He observes that more Kentuckians emigrated to free states than to slave states and indicates that one-third of Oregonians were of southern origins, including almost half of the delegates to the territory’s 1857 constitutional convention. Dippel’s statistical analysis is especially useful when he is able to link racist legislation and state constitutional provisions to politicians from particular districts where southerners and former southerners settled most heavily. But even these numbers suggest what white plain folk thought about race, without confirming that the desire to be free of exposure to black people was, in and of itself, a principle motivation for moving. . . .

Dippel’s treatment of Free Soil ideology as a persistent southern folk-way with important political manifestations can be quite informative. The final chapter of the book features the story of Tennessee-born, Missouri-raised Peter H. Burnett as an advocate of black exclusion in both the Oregon and California territories. Several hundred miles away from established slave states and in the virtual absence of African Americans, anti-black racism constituted an important force in defining the values of the frontier. Earlier in the book, Dippel provides a brief, effective sketch of Jonathan Jennings’s party as it forestalled the spread of slavery to Indiana while also seeking to minimize the black presence in the Hoosier state by refusing to extend the franchise to free blacks.

A more extensive and systematic incorporation of the voices, visions, and stories of specific plain folk and their representatives would have greatly strengthened this study.