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

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.

Author: Timothy R. Mahoney
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 05/17/2016
Pages: 504
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.53lbs
Size: 9.34h x 6.27w x 1.15d
ISBN: 9781107122697

About the Author
Mahoney, Timothy R.: - Timothy R. Mahoney is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. He is the author of River Towns in the Great West: The Structure of Provincial Urbanization in the American Midwest (Cambridge, 1990) and Provincial Lives: Middle-Class Experience in the Antebellum Middle West (Cambridge, 1999). Collectively, this trilogy of books tells a comprehensive story of the transformations of the Midwest and nineteenth-century American society in general.