ePub Black Leaders of the Nineteenth Century by From University of Illinois Press in History

Description

A free region deeply influenced by southern mores; the Lower Middle West represented a true cultural and political median in Civil War-era America. Here grew a Unionism steeped in the mythology of the Loyal West--a myth rooted in regional and racial animosities and the belief that westerners had won the war. Matthew E. Stanley's intimate study explores the Civil War; Reconstruction; and sectional reunion in this bellwether region. Using the lives of area soldiers and officers as a lens; Stanley reveals a place and a strain of collective memory that was anti-rebel; anti-eastern; and anti-black in its attitudes--one that came to be at the forefront of the northern retreat from Reconstruction and toward white reunion. The Lower Middle West's embrace of black exclusion laws; origination of the Copperhead movement; backlash against liberalizing war measures; and rejection of Reconstruction were all pivotal to broader American politics. And the region's legacies of white supremacy--from racialized labor violence to sundown towns to lynching--found malignant expression nationwide; intersecting with how Loyal Westerners remembered the war.