
The Emerging Midwest Upland Southerners and the Political Culture of the Old Northwest, 1787-1861
- Binding: Hardcover
- Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr
- Publish date: 04/01/1996
Description:
Frequently mis-characterized as a vast homogeneous region, the territory from earliest European settlement has seen diverse migrant groups. The process of defining the Midwest began when Northern and Southern migrants began to identify themselves as Westerners. Shared identities as citizens of the new republic, as members of political parties, and as Westerners forged a Midwestern identity that Southern settlers shared with Yankees, Pennsylvanians, and others descending on the future states of Indiana, Ohio, and Illinois. The Civil War shook this new regional identity but did not destroy it. Focusing on Upland Southerners (from Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, and Tennessee), Nicole Etcheson examines the tensions between a developing Midwestern identity and residual regional loyalty to the South. This dynamic process mirrored the nation-building and national disintegration experienced in the U.S. between the Revolution and the Civil War. The story of these Upland Southerners is also unique, shedding light on the meaning of the South for those who left it, on the new republic's ability to overcome sectional loyalties, and on the creation of a new region, the Midwest.
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