The great beef-cattle industry of the American West was not born full grown beyond the Mississippi. It had its antecedents in the upper South, the Midwest, and the Ohio Valley, where many Texas cattlemen learned their trade. In this book Mr. Henlein tells the story of the cattle kingdom of the Ohio Valley—a kingdom which encompassed the Bluegrass region in Kentucky and the valleys of the Scioto, Miami, Wabash, and Sangamon in Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The book begins with the settlement of the Ohio Valley, by emigration from the South and East, in the latter part of the eighteenth century; it ends with the westward movement of the cattlemen, this time to Missouri and the plains, toward the end of the nineteenth century. Mr. Henlein describes the intricate pattern of agricultural activities which grew into a successful system of producing and marketing cattle; the energetic upbreeding and extensive importations which created the great blooded herds of the Ohio Valley; and the relations of the cattlemen with the major cattle markets. An interesting part of this story is the chapter which tells how the cattlemen of the Ohio Valley, between 1805 and 1855, drove their fat cattle over the mountains to the eastern markets, and how these long drives, like the more famous Texas drives of a later day, disappeared with the advent of the railroads. This well-documented study is an important contribution to the history of American agriculture.

A forested borderland dominated by American Indians in 1780, Ohio was a landscape of farms and towns inhabited by people from all over the world in 1830. The Center of a Great Empire: The Ohio Country in the Early Republic chronicles this dramatic and all-encompassing change. Editors Andrew R.L. Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs have assembled a focused collection of articles by established and rising scholars that address the conquest of Native Americans, the emergence of a democratic political culture, the origins of capitalism, the formation of public culture, the growth of evangelical Protestantism, the ambiguous status of African Americans, and social life in a place that most contemporaries saw as on the cutting edge of human history. Indeed, to understand what was happening in the Ohio country in the decades after the American Revolution is to go a long way toward understanding what was happening in the United States and the Atlantic world as a whole. For The Center of a Great Empire, distinguished historians of the American nation in its first decades question conventional wisdom. Downplaying the frontier character of Ohio, they offer new answers and open new paths of inquiry through investigations of race, education, politics, religion, family, commerce, colonialism, and conquest. As it underscores key themes in the history of the United States,The Center of a Great Empire pursues issues that have fascinated people for two centuries.Andrew R. L. Cayton, distinguished professor of history at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, is the author of several books, including Ohio: The History of a People and, with Fred Anderson, The Dominion of War: Liberty and Empire in North America, 1500-2000 . Stuart D. Hobbs is program director for History in the Heartland, a professional development program for middle and high school teachers of history. Hobbs is the author of The End of the American Avant Garde.

“Raitz examines the rich story of distilling in its Kentucky heartland and traces its maturation from a local craft to an enduring industry.” —William Wyckoff, author of How to Read the American West While other industries chase after the new and improved, bourbon makers celebrate traditions that hearken back to an authentic frontier craft. Distillers enshrine local history in their branding and time-tested recipes, and rightfully so. Kentucky’s unique geography shaped the whiskeys its settlers produced, and for more than two centuries, distilling bourbon fundamentally altered every aspect of Kentucky’s landscape and culture. Making Bourbon: A Geographical History of Distilling in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky illuminates how the specific geography, culture, and ecology of the Bluegrass converged and gave birth to Kentucky’s favorite barrel-aged whiskey. Expanding on his fall 2019 release Bourbon’s Backroads, Karl Raitz delivers a more nuanced discussion of bourbon’s evolution by contrasting the fates of two distilleries in Scott and Nelson Counties. In the nineteenth century, distilling changed from an artisanal craft practiced by farmers and millers to a large-scale mechanized industry. The resulting infrastructure—farms, mills, turnpikes, railroads, steamboats, lumberyards, and cooperage shops—left its permanent mark on the land and traditions of the commonwealth. Today, multinational brands emphasize and even construct this local heritage. This unique interdisciplinary study uncovers the complex history poured into every glass of bourbon. “A gem. The depth of Raitz’s research and the breadth of his analysis have produced a masterful telling of the shift from craft to industrial distilling. And in telling us the story of bourbon, Raitz also makes a terrific contribution to our understanding of America's nineteenth-century economy.” —David E. Hamilton, author of From New Day to New Deal

When originally published, A New History of Kentucky provided a comprehensive study of the Commonwealth, bringing it to life by revealing the many faces, deep traditions, and historical milestones of the state. With new discoveries and findings, the narrative continues to evolve, and so does the telling of Kentucky's rich history. In this second edition, authors James C. Klotter and Craig Thompson Friend provide significantly revised content with updated material on gender politics, African American history, and cultural history. This wide-ranging volume includes a full overview of the state and its economic, educational, environmental, racial, and religious histories. At its essence, Kentucky's story is about its people -- not just the notable and prominent figures but also lesser-known and sometimes overlooked personalities. The human spirit unfolds through the lives of individuals such as Shawnee peace chief Nonhelema Hokolesqua and suffrage leader Madge Breckinridge, early land promoter John Filson, author Wendell Berry, and Iwo Jima flag--raiser Private Franklin Sousley. They lived on a landscape defined by its topography as much as its political boundaries, from Appalachia in the east to the Jackson Purchase in the west, and from the Walker Line that forms the Commonwealth's southern boundary to the Ohio River that shapes its northern boundary. Along the journey are traces of Kentucky's past -- its literary and musical traditions, its state-level and national political leadership, and its basketball and bourbon. Yet this volume also faces forthrightly the Commonwealth's blemishes -- the displacement of Native Americans, African American enslavement, the legacy of violence, and failures to address poverty and poor health. A New History of Kentucky ranges throughout all parts of the Commonwealth to explore its special meaning to those who have called it home. It is a broadly interpretive, all-encompassing narrative that tells Kentucky's complex, extensive, and ever-changing story.

Appalachia has long been stereotyped as a region of feuds, moonshine stills, mine wars, environmental destruction, joblessness, and hopelessness. Robert Schenkkan's 1992 Pulitzer-Prize winning play The Kentucky Cycle once again adopted these stereotypes, recasting the American myth as a story of repeated failure and poverty--the failure of the American spirit and the poverty of the American soul. Dismayed by national critics' lack of attention to the negative depictions of mountain people in the play, a group of Appalachian scholars rallied against the stereotypical representations of the region's people. In Back Talk from Appalachia, these writers talk back to the American mainstream, confronting head-on those who view their home region one-dimensionally. The essays, written by historians, literary scholars, sociologists, creative writers, and activists, provide a variety of responses. Some examine the sources of Appalachian mythology in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literature. Others reveal personal experiences and examples of grassroots activism that confound and contradict accepted images of ""hillbillies."" The volume ends with a series of critiques aimed directly at The Kentucky Cycle and similar contemporary works that highlight the sociological, political, and cultural assumptions about Appalachia fueling today's false stereotypes.

Part of a series of detailed reference manuals on American economic history, this volume traces the development of agriculture, transportation, labour movements and the factory system, foreign and domestic commerce, technology and the ramifications of slavery.

After the War of 1812 and the removal of the region's Indigenous peoples, the American Midwest became a paradoxical land for settlers. Even as many settlers found that the region provided the bountiful life of their dreams, others found disappointment, even failure--and still others suffered social and racial prejudice. In this broad and authoritative survey of midwestern agriculture from the War of 1812 to the turn of the twentieth century, R. Douglas Hurt contends that this region proved to be the country's garden spot and the nation's heart of agricultural production. During these eighty-five years the region transformed from a sparsely settled area to the home of large industrial and commercial cities, including Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Detroit. Still, it remained primarily an agricultural region that promised a better life for many of the people who acquired land, raised crops and livestock, provided for their families, adopted new technologies, and sought political reform to benefit their economic interests. Focusing on the history of midwestern agriculture during wartime, utopian isolation, and colonization as well as political unrest, Hurt contextualizes myriad facets of the region's past to show how agricultural life developed for midwestern farmers--and to reflect on what that meant for the region and nation.

How did animal breeding emerge as a movement? Who took part and for what reasons? How do the pedigree and market systems work? What light might the movement shed on the assumptions behind human eugenics? In Bred for Perfection, Margaret Derry provides the most comprehensive and accessible book yet published on the human quest to improve and develop livestock. Derry, herself a breeder and trained historian of science, explores the "triangle" of genetics, eugenics, and practical breeding, focusing on Shorthorn cattle, show dogs and working dogs, and one type of purebred horse, the Arabian. By examining specific breeders and the animals they produced, she illuminates the role of technology, genetics, culture, and economics in the system of purebred breeding. Bred for Perfection also provides the historical context in which this system arose, adding to our understanding of how domestication works and how our welfare—since the dawn of time—has been intertwined with the lives of animals.

The history of the meat packing industry of the Midwest offers an excellent illustration of the growth and development of the economy of that major industrial region. In the course of one generation, meat packing matured from a small-scale, part-time activity to a specialized manufacturing operation. Margaret Walsh's pioneering study traces the course of that development, shedding light on an unexamined aspect of America's economic history. As the Midwest emerged from the frontier period during the 1840s and 1850s, the growing urban demand for meat products led to the development of a seasonal industry conducted by general merchants during the winter months. In this early stage the activity was widely dispersed but centered mainly along rivers, which provided ready transportation to markets. The growth of the railroads in the 1850s, coupled with the westward expansion of population, created sharp changes in the shape and structure of the industry. The distinct advantages of good rail connections led to the concentration of the industry primarily in Chicago, but also in St. Louis and Milwaukee. The closing of the Mississippi River during the Civil War insured the final dominance of rail transport and spelled the relative decline of such formerly important packing points as Cincinnati and Louisville. By the 1870s large and efficient centralized stockyards were being developed in the major centers, and improved technology, particularly ice-packing, favored those who had the capital resources to invest in expansion and modernization. By 1880, the use of the refrigerated car made way for the chilled beef trade, and the foundations of the giant meat packing industry of today had been firmly established. Margaret Walsh has located an impressive array of primary materials to document the rise of this important early industry, the predecessor and in many ways the precursor of the great industrial complex that still dominates today's midwestern economy.

When historical geographer Sam B. Hilliard's book Hog Meat and Hoecake was published in 1972, it was ahead of its time. It was one of the first scholarly examinations of the important role food played in a region's history, culture, and politics, and it has since become a landmark of foodways scholarship. In the book Hilliard examines the food supply, dietary habits, and agricultural choices of the antebellum American South, including Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. He explores the major southern food sources at the time, the regional production of commodity crops, and the role of those products in the subsistence economy. Far from being primarily a plantation system concentrating on cash crops such as cotton and tobacco, Hilliard demonstrates that the South produced huge amounts of foodstuffs for regional consumption. In fact, the South produced so abundantly that, except for wines and cordials, southern tables were not only stocked with the essentials but amply laden with veritable delicacies as well. (Though contrary to popular opinion, neither grits nor hominy ever came close to being universally used in the South prior to the Civil War.) Hilliard's focus on food habits, culture, and consumption was revolutionary--as was his discovery that malnutrition was not a major cause of the South's defeat in the Civil War. His book established the methods and vocabulary for studying a region's cuisine in the context of its culture that foodways scholars still employ today. This reissue is an excellent and timely reminder of that.