This book explores the condition of the US population and landscape as it changed, ca. 1800-1860, and argues that the turn to coal after 1820 improved that condition by relieving pressures on land and forests. The author investigates how by adopting coal, American settlers in the North advanced more sustainable forestry and agricultural practices that enabled them to feed the growing population, developed domestic industries, ended their battle with slaveholders for control of American lands, helped free the enslaved, and promoted economic development for a free people in the United States. He further examines long-term environmental-social change in America and re-evaluates the Civil War as a product of an ongoing battle over land-use systems.

Robert K. Schaeffer is Professor Emeritus of sociology at Kansas State University.