Frontier Swashbuckler: The Life and Legend of John Smith T

Lincoln University professor Steward has written a biography of one of his state's more colorful figures; though largely forgotten today, John Smith T was notorious in his own time, a key player in the rowdy land grab that went on as the American frontier moved west. Smith T was born in Georgia around 1770 and began staking his claim, when he was just 19, to large tracts of land in Tennessee (he later added the ""T"" to his name to distinguish himself from the scads of other John Smiths in the early republic), and then moved on into Missouri. Smith T consolidated his land claims by getting himself appointed a lieutenant colonel in the local militia and also as local judge, meting out his own form of justice. Myths and legends sprouted about the unscrupulous land grabber, like the one that claimed he had $750,000 in a 20-gallon brass kettle buried near his home. Steward tries to clear away the myth and uncover the truth about Smith T, but he limits the value of his work by writing in a historiographical vacuum. He takes little notice of the New Western history, as can be seen in observations like: ""The frontier was a savage place, peopled by rough and savage men, with savage ways."" Furthermore, the vast literature on slavery has no impact here--Steward writes of ""the emergence of capitalism"" in the West, for example, without acknowledging that there has been for decades a major debate about whether American slave society was capitalist. This biography is serviceable, then, but already outdated in its approach. (Jan.)