The Good Country: A History Of The American Midwest 1800-1900, by Jon K. Lauck

Even if I am by no means the sort of person that this book is aimed at, this is a book I can appreciate on several levels. The author has written something that is often lacking in contemporary historiography, and that is a thoughtful regional history that acknowledges contemporary identity politics and concerns about justice and politics without overwhelming the positive aspects of history that are often disregarded by critical “historians.” In the author’s estimation, and I think it a fair one, the Midwest was a good country and had a lot going for it in the period between 1800 and 1900. It was by no means a perfect land, and there are some areas in which my own personal interests would not be well served in such an area that would keep it from feeling like home for me personally, but at the same time it deserves a lot more respect as a region than it has tended to receive. A good country is by no means a perfect country, and the Midwest is a region that has helped to shape a great deal of what it means to be an American, particularly an American as an American and not merely an extension of European ways of thinking and behaving.

Writing a good regional history, as this book is, is a difficult balancing act, and this volume is short enough that it could easily have been far longer, though for its purposes it does enough to hint at multitudes and encourage the reader who likes what is said here to seek out the more targeted works that give more details about whatever aspects of the Midwest during the 19th century (or beyond) is most of interest. The author makes a strong case that the essential aspects of the Midwest were formed by a mix between beneficent geographic and demographic factors, a legal order that banned slavery and encouraged egalitarian development of small family farms and a host of small-to-medium sized and eventually very large cities that profited from the growth of America’s industrial power and that provided a worthwhile laboratory for freedom that are worthy of great respect despite some imperfections. If we look at the combination of political and economic freedoms, high levels of social cohesion and cooperativeness as well as commonplace yearnings for growth and education and family and personal well-being, the Midwest had (and in many ways still has) a lot going for it. The author redeems the area from being considered to be boring and straight-laced and demonstrates that there is a lot going on in the Midwest that is worthy of serious scholarly reflection as well as widespread appreciation.

In terms of its contents, this book’s main contents are a bit more than 200 pages but it contains more than 120 pages of notes, which repay some study for those who want to read more where this book comes from. The book begins with acknowledgements as well as an introduction that discusses the exceptionalism of the supposed “old square world” of the American Midwest. The first chapter of the book discusses how democracy was deliberately and successfully planted in the Midwest during the beginning of America’s history as an independent country and how that developed through the course of the 19th century (1). After that the author examines the growth of the common democratic culture of the Midwest during the 1800s (2). This is followed by a discussion of the formation of the Midwestern regional identity in opposition to the hierarchical societies found in the Northeast and especially the South, while also having a lot of economic ties with the East Coast (3). After this, the author looks at racial failures and advances in the Midwest over the course of the 19th century (4). The last chapter of the book then discusses the Midwest and the age of mild reform insofar as it comes to coeducation, temperance, and related social movements, including the Grange and populist movements (5). The book ends with a conclusion where the author finds virtue in the Midwest, extensive endnotes, and an index.