American History, Midwest

The Rescue of Joshua Glover
A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War
By H. Robert Baker

On March 11, 1854, the people of Wisconsin prevented agents of the federal government from carrying away the fugitive slave, Joshua Glover. Assembling in mass outside the Milwaukee courthouse, they demanded that the federal officers respect his civil liberties as they would those of any other citizen of the state. When the officers refused, the crowd took matters into its own hands and rescued Joshua Glover.

Ohio’s War
The Civil War in Documents
Edited by Christine Dee

In 1860, Ohio was among the most influential states in the nation. As the third-most-populous state and the largest in the middle west, it embraced those elements that were in concert-but also at odds-in American society during the Civil War era. Ohio’s War uses documents from that vibrant and tumultuous time to reveal how Ohio’s soldiers and civilians experienced the Civil War.

The Fairer Death
Executing Women in Ohio
By Victor L. Streib

Women on death row are such a rarity that, once condemned, they may be ignored and forgotten. Ohio, a typical, middle-of-the-road death penalty state, provides a telling example of this phenomenon. The Fairer Death: Executing Women in Ohio explores Ohio’s experience with the death penalty for women and reflects on what this experience reveals about the death penalty for women throughout the nation.Victor

The History of Michigan Law
Edited by Paul Finkelman and Martin J. Hershock

The History of Michigan Law offers the first serious survey of Michigan’s rich legal past. Michigan legislators have played a leading role in developing modern civil rights law, protecting the environment, and assuring the right to counsel for those accused of crimes. Michigan was the first jurisdiction in the English-speaking world to abolish the death penalty.

The History of Indiana Law
Edited by David J. Bodenhamer and Randall T. Shepard

Long regarded as a center for middle-American values, Indiana is also a cultural crossroads that has produced a rich and complex legal and constitutional heritage. The History of Indiana Law traces this history through a series of expert articles by identifying the themes that mark the state’s legal development and establish its place within the broader context of the Midwest and nation.The

The Black Laws
Race and the Legal Process in Early Ohio
By Stephen Middleton

Beginning in 1803, the Ohio legislature enacted what came to be known as the Black Laws. These laws instituted barriers against blacks entering the state and placed limits on black testimony against whites.

Frontiers of Freedom
Cincinnati’s Black Community 1802–1868
By Nikki M. Taylor

Nineteenth-century Cincinnati was northern in its geography, southern in its economy and politics, and western in its commercial aspirations. While those identities presented a crossroad of opportunity for native whites and immigrants, African Americans endured economic repression and a denial of civil rights, compounded by extreme and frequent mob violence. No other northern city rivaled Cincinnati’s vicious mob spirit.Frontiers

The Center of a Great Empire
The Ohio Country in the Early Republic
Edited by Andrew R. L. Cayton and Stuart D. Hobbs

The people who lived in what became the seventeenth state in the American Union in 1803 were not only at the center of a great empire, they were at the center of the most important historical developments in the revolutionary Atlantic World.

The History of Ohio Law
By Michael Les Benedict and John F. Winkler

The History of Ohio Law is a complete sourcebook on the origin and development of Ohio law and its relationship to society. A model for work in this field, it is the starting point for any investigation of the subject.In the two-volume The History of Ohio Law, distinguished legal historians, practicing Ohio attorneys, and judges present the history of Ohio law and the interaction between law and society in the state.

Ohio University, 1804–2004
The Spirit of a Singular Place
By Betty Hollow

Lively narrative depicting the historical, academic, and cultural events that shaped one of Ohio’s premier universities.

Creating a Perfect World
Religious and Secular Utopias in Nineteenth-Century Ohio
By Catherine M. Rokicky

Powerful currents of religious revival and political and social reform swept nineteenth-century America. Many people expressed their radical religious and social ideals by creating or joining self-contained utopian communities. These utopianists challenged the existing social and economic order with alternative notions about religion, marriage, family, sexuality, property ownership, and wage labor.Between 1787 and 1919, approximately 270 utopian communities existed in the United States.

Buckeye Women
The History of Ohio’s Daughters
By Stephane Elise Booth

An accessible and comprehensive account of the role Ohio women have assumed in the history of the state and a narrative of their hardships and of the victories that have been won in the past two hundred years.

Rookwood and the Industry of Art
Women, Culture, and Commerce, 1880–1913
By Nancy E. Owen

Rookwood Pottery of Cincinnati—the largest, longest-lasting, and arguably most important American Art Pottery—reflected the country’s cultural and commercial milieux in the production, marketing, and consumption of its own products.Rookwood

Ohio’s First Peoples
By James H. O'Donnell

Ohio’s First Peoples depicts the Native Amerxadicans of the Buckeye State from the time of the Hopewell peoples to the forced removal of the Wyandots in the 1840s.

Home and Away
The Rise and Fall of Professional Football on the Banks of the Ohio, 1919–1934
By Carl M. Becker

A history of semiprofessional football clubs in Ohio—the Ironton Tanks, the Portsmouth Spartans, and others—and an intimate study of how the citizens and organizations that made up these cities worked to put themselves on the map.

Barns of the Midwest
Edited by Allen G. Noble and Hubert G. H. Wilhelm

For many, the barn is the symbol of the Midwestern United States. It represents tangible wealth, solid citizenship, industry, stability, and other agrarian values associated with its conservative, Anglo-Saxon settlers.Editors Noble and Wilhelm set out to examine these stereotypes. European settlement of the Midwest, though primarily English and German, was never homogenous and the character of the Midwest barn reflects this.