Lee Clark Mitchell 
Witnesses to a Vanishing America 
The Nineteenth-Century Response

Propelled across the continent by notions of rugged individualism’ and ‘manifest destiny, ‘ pioneer Americans soon discovered that such slogans only partly disguised the fact that building an empire meant destroying a wilderness. Through an astonishing range of media, they voiced their concern about America’s westward mission. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence, Lee Clark Mitchell portrays the growing apprehensions
Originally published in 1981.
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