From Hometown to Battlefield in the Civil War Era
Middle Class Life in Midwest America

Mahoney examines how the middle class from across the great West were transformed by years of recession and civil war.

Timothy R. Mahoney (Author)

9781107122697, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 May 2016

504 pages, 13 b/w illus.
23.6 x 16 x 2.8 cm, 0.7 kg

'… this book provides an intimate examination of this region and the people living in it and offers a much-needed counterbalance to eastern or southern-centric social histories of the Civil War. It would be profitably read by anyone interested in Midwestern history, the history of the Civil War, and the eternally interesting topic of America's evolving middle class.' Brian Schoen, The Michigan Historical Review

Mahoney examines how members of the middle class from small cities across the great West were transformed by boom and bust, years of recession, and civil war. He argues that in their encounters with national economic forces, the national crisis in politics, and the Civil War, middle class people were cut adrift from the social identity that they had established in the 'face to face' communities of the 'hometowns' of the urban West. By grounding them in their hometown ethos, and understanding how the Panic of 1857 and the subsequent recession undermined their lives, the author provides important insights into how they encountered, responded to, and were changed by their experiences in the Civil War. Providing a rare view of social history through the framework of the Civil War, the author documents, in both breadth and depth, the dramatic change and development of modern life in nineteenth-century America.

Part I. Hometown: 1. 'You are home folk' - hometown and the middle class
2. 'What will become of our town?' - the rise and fall of the booster ethos, 1856–60
3. 'Hard… and revolutionary times' - the crisis of the middle class, 1858–61
4. 'God bless the good old town' - constructing trans-local communities in the 1850s
Part II. Battlefield: 5. 'It is all the talk in town' - the booster ethos and struggle for Main Street, 1860–1
6. 'Almost sacred and hallowed ground' - civil war as spatial narrative
7. 'The boys of 61' - the social order of company and regiment
8. 'The 'inner' and 'outer' man' - encountering 'military ways and means'
9. 'Civil war in our midst' - waging war at home and abroad, 1862–5
Epilogue - 'scattering to the four ends of the Earth' - 'the old town' and the middle class.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Sociology & anthropology [JH], Social classes [JFSC], Social interaction [JFFP], American Civil War [HBWJ], Social & cultural history [HBTB], History [HB]