At Home In The Hoosier Hills

by Nation, Richard F.

• ISBN13: 9780253345912
• ISBN10: 025334591X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-09-01
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

This book explores the lives and worldviews of Indiana's southern hill-country residents during much of the 19th century. Focusing on local institutions, political, economic, and religious, it gives voice to the plain farmers of the region and reveals the world as they saw it. For them, faith in local institutions reflected a distrust of distant markets and politicians. Localism saw its expression in the Democratic Party's anti-federalist strain, in economic practices such as "safety-first" farming which focused on taking care of the family first, and in non-perfectionist Christianity. Localism was both a means of resisting changes and the basis of a worldview that helped Hoosiers of the hill country negotiate these changes.Richard F. Nation is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University.

Author Biography

Richard F. Nation is Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Michigan University.

Table of Contents

The land and its peoples	p. 6
Religion and the localist ethic	p. 38
"Surplus produce" and market exchange	p. 77
The politics of localism	p. 128
Localism, race, and the Civil War	p. 186
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