Coopers The Chainbearer presents an exciting narrative that interrogates issues of what it means to own land. The novel examines the claims of ownership of wilderness land among Native Americans, New England squatters, and the old New York families with legal deeds.In 1845 and 1846, James Fenimore Cooper published The Littlepage Manuscripts, a trilogy reflecting on the antirent movement among small farmers leasing parcels in the Hudson Valley who had begun protesting against the land ownership of the old Dutch patroons. Tracing four generations of the landowners, the trilogy focused on fundamental issues of what land ownership meant under the US Constitutionwhich Cooper understood to guarantee absolute rights of property ownershipand also the legitimacy of such ownership of land taken from the Native Americans who did not hold such doctrines.Cooper told his British publisher that the guiding theme of The Chainbearer (1845), the second novel in the series, was "Revolution," which he presented by beginning the novel with recounting the heroic participation of his hero, Mordaunt Littlepage, in the American Revolution. In 1784, to manage his familys holdings, Mordaunt ventures into the wilds of upper New York, where settlers, many from New England, hoped the Revolution had dissolved their "feudal" commitments to the legal owners. There he encounters one of Coopers archetypal demagogues, Jason Newcome, who manipulates the settlers to his advantage, as well as an old family...

Binding: Paperback;554 pages; Publisher: State University of New York Press; Classification: FC; Weight: 868 g; Dimensions: 229 x 152

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