New Book on American History Features Gilbert Belnap

I’m not in the habit of plugging books–particularly ones I have not yet read–but a just-published book, entitled “Breakaway Americas: The Unmanifest Future of the Jacksonian United States” by Thomas Richards, Jr. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 360 pages), begins with a brief narration of the life of my great great grandfather, Gilbert Belnap, in the Introduction, starting on page 1 beginning in the first paragraph no less. (And I am cited in the book’s first footnote along with one of my family history websites: wp.belnapfamily.org. As Lorinda graciously quipped: “So, you’re a footnote in history.” 🙂 Yep–but a published footnote. Yet again.) Gilbert’s cameo appearance (he isn’t mentioned again after page 4) introduces the author’s thesis on a critical period in American history that the United States in the 1830s and 1840s was a far more diverse and fractious place than we might suppose. Gilbert serves as the author’s “representative character” for one featured group–members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Here’s the publisher’s blurb:

“Most Americans know that the state of Texas was once the Republic of Texas—an independent sovereign state that existed from 1836 until its annexation by the United States in 1846. But few are aware that thousands of Americans, inspired by Texas, tried to establish additional sovereign states outside the borders of the early American republic. In Breakaway Americas, Thomas Richards, Jr., examines six such attempts and the groups that supported them: “patriots” who attempted to overthrow British rule in Canada; post-removal Cherokees in Indian Territory; Mormons first in Illinois and then the Salt Lake Valley; Anglo-American overland immigrants in both Mexican California and Oregon; and, of course, Anglo-Americans in Texas.

“Though their goals and methods varied, Richards argues that these groups had a common mindset: they were not expansionists. Instead, they hoped to form new, independent republics based on the “American values” that they felt were no longer recognized in the United States . . . .

“Exposing nineteenth-century Americans’ lack of allegiance to their country, which at the time was plagued with economic depression, social disorder, and increasing sectional tension, Richards points us toward a new understanding of American identity and Americans as a people untethered from the United States as a country. Through its wide focus on a diverse array of American political practices and ideologies, Breakaway Americas will appeal to anyone interested in the Jacksonian United States, US politics, American identity, and the unpredictable nature of history.”

I’m certain that Gilbert Belnap–an otherwise ordinary man born in 1821 in Upper Canada (now Ontario) who migrated back to the home country of his parents where he practically stumbled upon the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and later made the epic trek West to the Great Basin–would be stunned to see his life narrative featured as the introductory leitmotif in a book on an important era in 19th Century American history. Pretty cool, I think. Thank you, Gilbert Belnap, for your depth of character and conviction–and for recording your life story from which others have drawn great inspiration nearly 200 years after your birth!

Categorised in: Gilbert Belnap

This post was written by Brent J. Belnap