"Providing a rich study of a typically overlooked nineteenth-century frontier zone . . . the work's greatest contribution lies in its substantiation of the critical links between the development of the U.S. South and the U.S. West in the nineteenth century. In doing so, Shire has produced a valuable history of American nation-building that realizes the promise of thinking beyond the boundaries separating southern and western history." (Western Historical Quarterly) "This is clearly the best work to date on the manner in which domesticity justified Manifest Destiny. Shire offers a unique and compelling examination of the role of Southern women in territorial expansion, combined with a first-rate historical analysis of the Seminole and their relationship to native groups elsewhere in the Southwest, placing Florida itself in the larger context of expansion in the early American republic." (Amy Greenberg, Pennsylvania State University)
