The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900 by Jon K. Lauck (review)

Reviewed by: The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900 by Jon K. Lauck Nicole Etcheson The Good Country: A History of the American Midwest, 1800–1900 By Jon K. Lauck (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2022. Pp. xi, 350. Notes, index. Clothbound, $65.00; paperbound, $26.95.) The Good Country reminds this reader of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States (1980). Former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels expressed the opinion that Zinn’s work should be banned from Indiana public universities, which led many Hoosiers to read it. (See Scott Jaschik, “The Governor’s Bad List,” Inside Higher Education, July 16, 2013). One described it as an unrelieved account of oppression and exploitation. The Good Country is an almost unrelieved account of the superiority of midwestern democracy and civic life. Lauck frankly states that professional historians are “too focused on American faults and not sufficiently attentive to what would have been considered great achievements,” including religious and political freedom, civil rights, and an egalitarian economic and social system (p. 4). Lauck’s interpretation harks back to mid-twentieth-century historians of the Midwest influenced by Frederick Jackson Turner. John Barnhart’s Valley of Democracy (1953) presented a frontier where settlers resisted anti-democratic eastern institutions. Certainly, the Midwest and East did better than the South with its oligarchical political system and systematic disfranchisement of emancipated African Americans. The Midwest was an agricultural region—a statement true of the rest of the United States in the nineteenth century—populated by small farmers. This contrasts with the South’s antebellum enslaved labor force and its post-Civil War slide into sharecrop-ping and tenancy. But land-owning [End Page 290] was precarious even in parts of the Midwest, which explains the appeal of the Populist Party to farmers on the Great Plains. As the above analysis indicates, historians will probably quibble with some of Lauck’s assertions: what were the actual rates of farm tenancy and economic equality? Do powerful anti-Catholic sentiments contradict assertions of religious freedom? Given the important recent work about slavery’s capitalist nature, can the Midwest be considered uniquely entrepreneurial? Was the women’s culture of the Midwest truly distinctive from that of other regions? Lauck is less a Turnerian than a Whig historian. He acknowledges the painful treatment of African and Native Americans, but emphasizes progress. A treaty with the Wyandot “involved negotiation and consideration on both sides . . . but the pain of removal was real” (p. 79). Lauck concedes that we now view efforts to assimilate Native Americans “with sadness and regret,” but he obscures the dishonesty and cruelty of removal (p. 80). Father Benjamin Marie Petit, ministering to the northern Indiana Potawatomi, marveled at the government’s duplicity in violating its own treaty. Petit accompanied the Potawatomi on their Trail of Tears and documented their suffering before he too died. Similarly, Lauck acknowledges midwestern Black laws, efforts to institutionalize enslavement, and anti-abolitionist violence. But he also emphasizes the Northwest Ordinance’s prohibition against slavery and the Underground Railroad. Gradually, African Americans achieved greater opportunities in education, politics, and civil life. The Midwest “fell far short of twentieth-first-century ideals of racial harmony,” but “the arc of racial progress in the Midwest bent decidedly upward” (p. 153). This is a copiously documented, comprehensive survey of nineteenth-century midwestern history. Some historians will see a framework for new interpretations; others will see an interpretation to reject; still others may find some assertions questionable and some the starting place for new discussions. Lauck asks us to weigh “the broad context of [midwesterners’] lived experiences,” to remember “their virtues,” and “take their sense of place and region seriously” (p. 200). [End Page 291] Nicole Etcheson Ball State University Copyright © 2023 Trustees of Indiana University