DOC Philadelphia Mummers (Images of Modern America) by Stephen M. Highsmith in History

Description

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.