Mr. Jefferson's lost cause: land, farmers, slavery, and the Louisiana Purchase

The land and Mr. Jefferson. Chapter 1. Choices and consequences -- Rain in Virginia and its results -- Lessons for yeomen -- Pasteur, Wilson, and the three sisters -- Yeomen, planters, and the land -- Cheap land and slave labor -- Chapter 2. Washington, Jefferson, three worthies, and plantation migrancy -- Philosophers in the parlor and lessons on the land -- Westward sweeps the course of desolation -- The gospel of Garland Harmon -- Chapter 3. The way not taken -- The makers of a new order -- Jefferson's epitaph -- Disestablishing the grandees -- The brotherhood -- The unpropitiated son -- Monticello again -- Jefferson and democracy -- Jefferson and the family farmer -- Chapter 4. Independence -- A dependent arcadia -- The virtues of diversification -- Commercial squires and ungovernable governors -- Diversification, the pursuit of happiness, and cities -- Eastward toward civility -- The thousand-foot line -- Chapter 5. Powers of the earth -- Land companies, trading companies, and triassic capitalism -- The great land companies and revolution -- Jefferson and western speculation -- Veterans' benefits -- Armed occupation -- Armed occupation marches on -- Chapter 6. Jefferson's opportunities and the land -- 1784 : the second opportunity : the trans-Appalachian west -- The third opportunity : the lower Mississippi Valley -- Old men's dreams and the memories of the land -- The invisible empire and the land. Chapter 7. Colonial-imperialism -- Colonies and empires -- From round table to board table -- Reinvesting the loot -- Landed gentry -- Chapter 8. Textile colonial-imperialism -- India is conquered by the mechanics -- Solving the problem of supply -- The Americans are put on notice -- Hamilton, Jefferson, and Tench Coxe respond to William Pitt -- Jefferson and the cotton business -- Slaves as cash crop -- The millers send out their salesmen -- Independence? -- The British and the plantocracy --

Resistance to the plantation system. Chapter 9. McGillivray

Mixed people and mixed motives

Indian statehood

McGillivray's nationality

McGillivray and Washington

Chapter 10. Resisters, assisters, and lost causes

Scots, Blacks, and Seminoles

The firm

The valences shift

William Augustus Bowles : the second act

Bowles and Ellicott

"Execute him on the spot"

The fox is run to earth

Chapter 11. The firm steps forward

Deerskins, rum, and land

Indian yeomen and Governor Sargent's lost cause

Yankee yeomen

Chapter 12. Jeffersonian strategy and Jeffersonian agents

Jefferson and Wilkinson

Wilkinson's clients

The firm adapts and collects

Wilkinson, Forbes, and Dearborn

Debt for land

The accounts of Silas Dinsmoor

The firm wraps things up

Andrew Jackson takes charge, with some help from Benjamin Hawkins

Agents of the master organism : assistants to the plantation system. Chapter 13. Fulwar Skipwith in context

Skipwith the Jeffersonian

Toussaint's yeoman republic

The career of Fulwar Skipwith

The quasi war and spoliation

James Monroe's first mission to France

Skipwith, the Livingstons, and Louisiana cotton

The chancellor, indolent maroons, and Thomas Sumter

Mister Sumter is shocked

The third article

Skipwith and the Floridas

Consul Skipwith goes to jail

Chapter 14. Destiny by intention

The adventures of George Mathews

War, commerce, and race

Assisters and resisters

The green flag of Florida

Chapter 15. Louisiana and another class of Virginians

The third opportunity reconsidered

The Hillhouse debates

Chapter 16. The Virginians of Louisiana decide the future of the land

Out of the hills

The Kemper outrage

1809-1810

Skipwith and Randolph

Complexities in Baton Rouge

Skipwith at bay

Haiti again

Skipwith's Florida

Epilogue. The Jeffersonian legacy : The Civil War and the Homestead Act

Statesmanship and self-deception

Final thoughts

The economics of land use

Appendix. Another stream

Jefferson, Madison, Adam Smith, and the Chesapeake cities

The Romans, armed occupation, and the Homestead Act

Jefferson and the Ordinances of 1784 and 1787-89

Debt and land

Jefferson's Doctrine of usufruct

Tribes, land, and Ireland

Creeks, Seminoles, and numbers

The Livingstons and West Florida

The Claiborne-Clark duel

Fulwar Skipwith and Andrew Jackson.