Conserving a Democracy for White Men: Race and Economics in Indiana During the Civil War and Reconstruction (Reconstructing America)

Challenges traditional narratives that portray Civil War politics primarily through partisan divisions. Through examining Indiana politics before, during, and after the Civil War, this book brings recent scholarship on northern conservatives and the Midwest together to explain the behavior of a critical set of voters.Beginning in the 1850s and continuing to the 1880s, a group of voters emerged in Indiana, and by extension the Midwest, that wanted to defend the economic and political systems their ancestors had established.These legal, ideological, and political systems helped maintain a rough material equality between white men in Indiana through banning slavery, enfranchising most white men, and targeted government intervention in the economy.They likewise revered the Union. As racial and economic turmoil engulfed the nation beginning in the 1850s, Indiana conservatives reacted.They balanced their devotion to their political and economic systems with their devotion to the Union.Politi