The Great Heart of the Republic: St. Louis and the Cultural Civil War
2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 98; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/jahist/jar277
ISSN1945-2314
Autores Tópico(s)American Constitutional Law and Politics
ResumoIn The Great Heart of the Republic Adam Arenson redirects attention from the North/South division that is common in Civil War history toward a cultural civil war involving three regions: North, South, and West. Arenson believes St. Louis, a slave-state metropolis and gateway to the Great West, to be an ideal location for viewing this cultural conflict. Arenson is not the first historian to examine the importance of the West to the Civil War; typically the historiography has concentrated on how slavery's expansion into the West brought on the conflict. Arenson instead argues that the West was the site of competing visions that reflected and shaped the national divisions. An 1849 fire in St. Louis eradicated the city's pre-American past. The conflagration offered the chance not only to rebuild but also to redirect the city's commerce away from the river and toward the railroads. The Democratic senator Thomas Hart Benton embraced this new destiny but was thwarted by proslavery interests which feared the ease with which nonslaveowning settlers might populate a West opened by rail. Attempts to connect St. Louis by rail were also set back by a tragic bridge collapse. Other groups sought to impose their culture on the city. Northern settlers, led by the Massachusetts migrant William Greenleaf Eliot, hoped to inculcate Yankee values. Slaves such as Dred Scott and Harriet Scott sought heir freedom and received both aid and opposition from those in the city. German immigrants proved crucial to helping the Union keep control of St. Louis when prominent politicians were forming secessionist forces.
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