Race, removal, and the right to remain : migration and the making of the United States / Samantha Seeley.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Removal and the British Empire -- "The Whole Debt of the Nation" : Removal in Indian Country -- "A Great Road Cut" : Pursing the Right to Remain in the Ohio Valley -- The Tools of "Civilization" : Restricting Migration in the West -- "A Good Citizen of the Whole World" : Colonization in the Era of Gradual Emancipation -- "Shut Every State against Him" : Restricting Migration between the States -- "To Sunder Every Tie" : Pursuing the Right to Remain in the Upper South -- The Age of Removal -- Conclusion: The Power of Figuring.

"This work explores the conflicts over migration at the center of the social, political, intellectual, and physical landscape of the early United States. Examining the voluntary and forced migrations of Indigenous, African American, and Anglo Americans in the decades immediately following the Revolution, Samantha Seeley argues that the United States took shape as a white republic through contentious negotiations over who could move and where, who could remain and how. Removal was not sweeping, top-down federal legislation. Instead, it was a battle fought on multiple fronts. It encompassed tribal leaders' attempts to expel white settlers from Native lands and African Americans' legal battles to remain within states that sought to drive them out. National in scope, the book is grounded in a close examination of Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri--states poised between the edges of slavery and freedom where removal was both warmly embraced and hotly contested"-- Provided by publisher.