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Full Description
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.
Contents
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.
