Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1992
Abstract
In the thirty-seven years since Earl Pomeroy maintained that the political history of the midnineteenth century American West needed "further study and clarification," Howard R. Lamar, Lewis Gould, Clark Spence, and other specialists have produced detailed studies of politicallife in the western territories. Their works have shed light on the everyday workings and failures of the American territorial system and have elucidated the distinctive political and economic conditions that shaped local institutions in Dakota, Wyoming, and other western regions and influenced what Kenneth Owens has labelled "the pattern and structure of western politics."1
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 12:4 (Fall 1992). Copyright © 1992 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.