Ohio: The History of a People

by Cayton, Andrew R. L.

• ISBN13: 9780814208991
• ISBN10: 0814208991
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-01
• Publisher: Ohio State Univ Pr

Summary

As the state of Ohio prepares to celebrate its bicentennial in 2003, Andrew R. L.Cayton offers an account of ways in which diverse citizens have woven its history. Ohio: The History of a People centers around the many stories Ohioans have told about life in their state. The founders of Ohio in 1803 believed that its success would depend on the development of a public culture that emphasized what its citizens had in common with each other. But for two centuries, the remarkably diverse inhabitants of Ohio have repeatedly asserted their own ideas about how they and their children should lead their lives. The state's public culture has consisted of many voices, sometimes in conflict with each other. Using memoris, diaries, letters, novels, and paintings, Cayton writes Ohio's history as a collective biography of its citizens. Ohio, he argues, lies at the intersection of the stories of James Rhodes and Toni Morrison, Charles Ruthenberg and Lucy Webb Hayes, Carl Stokes and Alice Cary, Sherwood Anderson and Pete Rose. It lies in the tales of German Jews in Cincinnati,

Author Biography

Andrew R. L. Cayton is a Distinguished Professor at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

Table of Contents

Preface	vi
Prologue: Citizens	1	(12)
Strangers in Canaan	13	(32)
Improving Ohio	45	(30)
Considering Ohio	75	(32)
Defining Ohio	107	(34)
Alternative Ohios	141	(32)
Contesting Ohio	173	(34)
Reforming Ohio	207	(32)
The End of the Beginning	239	(30)
Ohio in Black and White	269	(34)
Labor and Liberty	303	(32)
The Good Life	335	(30)
The Future Is Past	365	(34)
Epilogue: ``Champions of Their Lives''	399	(10)
Notes	409	(24)
Bibliography	433	(26)
Acknowledgments	459	(2)
Index	461