"This book chronicles the "mania" for land speculation that swept the new United States, as the nation's elite founders rushed to profit off Native American dispossession. A story of statecraft, capitalism, ambition, and corruption, it offers a new account of the consequences of U.S. independence, revealing how the American Revolution produced a republican "empire of liberty" with financial speculation at its core"--

Contents
Introduction
Part I. The Rapturous Idea of Property
Chapter 1. Certain Unalienable Land Rights
Chapter 2. What the West Could Fund
Part II. Mania's Moment
Chapter 3. The Logic of Land Mania
Chapter 4. Paper Promises
Chapter 5. This Dirty Business
Chapter 6. Preemptive Property
Chapter 7. Federal Dealing
Part III. The Land of Speculation
Chapter 8. Great Discredit
Epilogue
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments