Read The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border By Christopher Phillips Full Books Online in HD Quality

Most Americans imagine the Civil War in terms of clear and defined boundaries of freedom and slavery: a straightforward division between the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri and the free states of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and Kansas. However, residents of these western border states, Abraham Lincoln's home region, had far more ambiguous identities - and political loyalties - than we commonly assume.
In The Rivers Ran Backward, historian Christopher Phillips sheds light on the fluid regional identities of the "Middle Border" states during the Civil War era. Far from forming a fixed and static boundary between the North and South, the border states experienced fierce internal conflicts over their political and social loyalties. White supremacy and widespread support for the existence of slavery pervaded the "free" states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, which had much closer economic and cultural ties to the South, while those in Kentucky and Missouri held little identification with the South except over slavery. Debates raged at every level, from the individual to the state, in parlors, churches, schools, and public meeting places, among families, neighbors, and friends. Ultimately, the violence of the Civil War and cultural politics in its aftermath proved to be the strongest determining factor in shaping the states' regional identities, leaving an indelible imprint on the way in which Americans thought both of themselves and others.
The Rivers Ran Backward reveals the complex history of the western border states as they struggled with questions of nationalism, racial politics, secession, neutrality, loyalty, and place - even as the Civil War threatened to tear the nation apart. In this work, Phillips shows that the Civil War was more than a conflict pitting the North against the South, but one within the West that reshaped American regionalism.

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border

The Rivers Ran Backward: The Civil War and the Remaking of the American Middle Border

More Books

War upon the Land: Military Strategy and the Transformation of Southern Landscapes during the American Civil War (Environmental History and the American South)

Lisa M. Brady

Bodies in Blue: Disability in the Civil War North

Sarah Handley-Cousins

The Hard Hand of War: Union Military Policy Toward Southern Civilians, 1861-1865

Mark Grimsley

An Environmental History of the Civil War

Judkin Browning

The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War

Don H. Doyle

South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

Alice L. Baumgartner

Apostles of Disunion: Southern Secession Commissioners and the Causes of the Civil War

Charles B. Dew

Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War

Elizabeth R. Varon

On Slavery's Border: Missouri's Small Slaveholding Households, 1815-1865 (Early American Places)

Diane Mutti Burke

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

Claudio Saunt