Overview

The familiar story of the Civil War tells of a predominately agricultural South pitted against a rapidly industrializing North. However, Adam Wesley Dean argues that the Republican Party's political ideology was fundamentally agrarian. Believing that small farms owned by families for generations led to a model society, Republicans supported a northern agricultural ideal in opposition to southern plantation agriculture, which destroyed the land's productivity, required constant western expansion, and produced an elite landed gentry hostile to the Union. Dean shows how agrarian republicanism shaped the debate over slavery's expansion, spurred the creation of the Department of Agriculture and the passage of the Homestead Act, and laid the foundation for the development of the earliest nature parks. Spanning the long nineteenth century, Dean's study analyzes the changing debate over land development as it transitioned from focusing on the creation of a virtuous and orderly citizenry to being seen primarily as a """"civilizing"""" mission. By showing Republicans as men and women with backgrounds in small farming, Dean unveils new connections between seemingly separate historical events, linking this era's views of natural and manmade environments with interpretations of slavery and land policy.

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9781469619910

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Reviews

Makes original and important contributions to the political history of the Civil War era. . . . Marks a sorely needed and convincing historiographical intervention.-- Journal of American History

Does a good job of taking the familiar details of mid-[19th] century America and reassembling them in a new light...There is much to think about in this good book.--Kansas History Astutely connects seemingly disparate policy changes in the United States by revealing the underlying battles over land use. . . . Reasserts the significance of agriculture to nineteenth-century America and provides a greater understanding of early American identity.--North Carolina Historical Review A well-written, important book for specialists and general readers alike and should spark renewed interest in nineteenth-century midwestern agrarian values and practices.--The Annals of Iowa Dean supports his argument well. . . . [And] rightly points out that emphasis on the Republicans' agrarian worldview makes the policies that they favored before, during, after the Civil War more comprehensible.--Journal of Interdisciplinary History Precisely the sort of direction in which Civil War environmental history needs to travel.--Civil War Monitor A fresh perspective that demands consideration. --CHOICE Dean's work is a valuable addition well worth the time of all who study the party of Abraham Lincoln and the many rural Republican Boys in Blue that eventually did its bidding.--H-Net Reviews An important new work that powerfully reorients our thinking about interregional political conflict during the Civil War era.--Journal of Southern History An ambitious exploration of the roots of an increasingly volatile disagreement over the meaning and original purpose of the West.--Western Historical Quarterly Makes original and important contributions to the political history of the Civil War era. . . . Marks a sorely needed and convincing historiographical intervention.--Journal of American History

A fresh perspective that demands consideration. -- CHOICE

Dean's work is a valuable addition well worth the time of all who study the party of Abraham Lincoln and the many rural Republican Boys in Blue that eventually did its bidding.-- H-Net Reviews

Author Information

Adam Wesley Dean is assistant professor of history at Lynchburg College, USA.

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