This State of Wonders: The Letters of an Iowa Frontier Family, 1858-1861 Book

Topic and scope of the book:
The Frontier Republic examines the early political history of the portion of the Northwest Territory that would eventually become the state of Ohio, and, particularly, ideological clashes between two distinct factions.

Thesis:
Cayton argues that the eventual form of Ohio politics took shape as a synthesis of the two initially dominant political powers. The Federalist-allied territorial government, with its ground of support in Marietta and the Muskingum River valley, operated under a system of political patronage, and often engaged in conflict with a diverse localist faction made up of earlier settlers and squatters and later, largely Virginia-derived, settlers of the Cincinnati area. Under the territorial government, the Federalists, whose power was substantially derivative of the national government, held sway. With the election of 1800 and Ohio's accession to the union in 1803, however, the balance of power shifted radically toward the Republicans, with whom the bulk of the localists had allied. As early as 1810, the Republican governor and legislature were tending toward greater state involvement in the economy. This early shift met with substantial resistance, but after the panic of 1819, however, the localist domination began to give way in favor of a lasting synthetic approach, which favored democratic political structures, but an economic policy of commercial development.

Author's point of view:
Cayton betrays obvious sympathies to the Federalists; Ohio, he argues, was part of a larger, even international, economic reality. No amount of local political control could change this. What was necessary for Ohio to be governed properly was to combine a political system democratic enough to satisfy the populace with an economic policy geared toward greater participation in the national and international economy. What this meant, essentially, was to adopt the Federalist outlook toward the western economy, which Cayton argues was not colonial but industrial, envisioning the west as processing its own goods and exporting manufactured products.

Use of evidence:
Cayton draws the bulk of his material from letters written by various notable figures in Ohio politics. The remainder of his material is largely made up of newspaper sources and public documents. He includes a bibliographic essay that, while now over twenty years old, is still a useful introduction to sources in the field.
Contribution to knowledge:
Cayton's contribution is rather limited; as his work deals primarily with the political machinations and ideological commitments of major figures in early Ohio politics, he has comparatively little to say about shifts in the political tendencies of the electorate. He does occasionally venture into such territory, particularly with his discussion of the role of Methodism in the Cincinnati area and his treatment of the elections of 1824 and 1828; however, he does not provide adequate context to offer a comprehensive picture of ideology in Ohio politics. What he does offer is a rather comprehensive study of shifts in the presented ideologies of various parties in Ohio politics in his selected period. As an example of this more narrow sort of political history, The Frontier Republic works quite well. The narrow scope of the book, however, limits (but certainly does not eliminate) its utility for any broader study of the role of political ideology in the early republic.