Description:
First edition. Full calf. 8vo. [xii] 381pp with 2 fold out maps and diagram of the solar system. Pages toned with some foxing. Covers and spine show wear.The second fold out map "engd. for Spafford's geography 1808" by Gideon Fairman Sr. is titled "United States; or Fredon."
"It was a great oversight" of the Constitution's framers that they did not give the United States a "proper name." So claimed Samuel Latham Mitchill in an 1803 broadside. A doctor by training, Mitchill not only diagnosed this problem, he also proposed a remedy. The land occupied by the United States, he suggested, should be called Fredon, or Fredonia in its more "poetical" form. The people of Fredonia would be called Fredonians or Fredes. And the adjectival form would be Fredish. Mitchill declared these various words were "sonorous," and the whole language "rich and copious." This Fredish language would even translate well into verse: "Their chiefs, to glory lead on/The noble sons of Fredon."