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Challenges the myth that the American national state was weak in the early days of the republic and provides a new narrative of American expansionism.
At the center of American history is a hole—a gap where some scholars’ indifference or disdain has too long stood in for the true story of the American Midwest. A first-ever chronicle of the Midwest’s formative century, The Good Country restores this American heartland to its central place in the nation’s history. Jon K. Lauck, the premier historian of the region, puts midwestern “squares” center stage—an unorthodox approach that leads to surprising conclusions. The American Midwest, in Lauck’s cogent account, was the most democratically advanced place in the world during the nineteenth century. The Good Country describes a rich civic culture that prized education, literature...
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Created in a world of empires, the United States was to be something new: an expansive republic proclaiming commitments to liberty and equality but eager to extend its territory and influence. Yet from the beginning, Native powers, free and enslaved Black people, and foreign subjects perceived, interacted with, and resisted the young republic as if it was merely another empire under the sun. Such perspectives have driven scholars to reevaluate the early United States, as the parameters of early American history have expanded in Atlantic, continental, and global directions. If the nation's acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands in 1898 traditionally marked its turn towar...
In between the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitutions, our nation was governed by a much lesser known--and lesser written about--document called the Articles of Confederation. Unlike many other books, George Van Cleve's readable and original history of the nation during this period does not treat it as the "backstory" of how the Constitution came to be, but, rather, on its own terms. In 1783, the American states had won the Revolutionary War, and the Articles of Confederation had won majority support among the public. Yet, only four years later, the government totally collapsed. In analyzing the extraordinarily divisive issues the Confederation faced in the aftermath of the R...