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The Midwestern United States (or Midwest) is a term relative to the north-central and northeastern United States of America, located entirely inland. The term has been in common use for over 100 years. Both the geographic center of the contiguous US (in Kansas) and the population center of the US (now in Missouri) are located in the region, and have been for a century. More geographically-oriented regional terms for these locations are the East North Central States (essentially the Great Lakes States); and the West North Central States (essentially the Great Plains States), as defined by the United States Census Bureau. Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from Northwest Territory), "Mid-America," or "Heartland". In everyday speech the region is almost universally referred to as the Midwest. Many Americans identify the region as the sociocultural center of the country.
Terminology The term "Middle West" originated in the 19th century, followed by "Midwest" and referred to generally the same areas and states in the region. The heart of the Midwest is bounded by the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys, the "Old Northwest" (or the "West"), referring to the states of Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, and Wisconsin, which comprised the original Northwest Territory. This area is now called the East North Central States by the United States Census Bureau and the "Great Lakes" region by its inhabitants. The Northwest Territory was created out of the ceded English (formerly French and Native American) frontier lands under the Northwest Ordinance by the Continental Congress just before the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The Northwest Ordinance prohibited slavery and religious discrimination, and promoted public schools and private property. The Northwest Ordinance also specified that the land be surveyed and sold in the rectangular grids of the Public Land Survey System, which was first used in Ohio. The effect of this grid system can be seen throughout the Midwest in such things as county shapes and road networks. In contrast, land in Kentucky and Tennessee was surveyed and sold using metes and bounds. As Revolutionary War soldiers were awarded lands in Ohio and migrated there and to other Midwestern states with other pioneers, the area became the first thoroughly "American" region. Frederick Jackson Turner celebrated its frontier for shaping the national character of individualism and democracy. The Midwest region today refers not only to states created from the Northwest Ordinance, but also may include states between the Appalachian Mountains to the Rocky Mountains and south of the Ohio River. In all 12 states are covered by The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (2006), the standard scholarly treatment. The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. During this time, the vast majority of the population lived east of the Appalachian Mountains, but the country's borders stretched west all the way to the Rocky Mountains. Later, the vast region west of the Appalachians was divided into the Far West (now just the West), and the Middle West. Some parts of the Midwest have also been referred to as North West for historical reasons (for instance, this explains the Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines and the former Norwest Bank, as well as Northwestern University in Illinois), so the current Northwest region of the country is called the Pacific Northwest to make a clear distinction. The Midwest is a term that is sometimes used interchangeably with the "Heartland" or "Middle America." Definition
Geography These states are generally perceived as being relatively flat. That is true of several areas, but there is a measure of geographical variation. In particular, the eastern Midwest lying near the foothills of the Appalachians, the Great Lakes basin, and northern parts of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Iowa demonstrate a high degree of topographical variety. Prairies cover most of the states west of the Mississippi River with the exception of eastern Minnesota and the Ozarks of southern Missouri. Illinois lies within an area called the "prairie peninsula," an eastward extension of prairies that borders deciduous forests to the north, east, and south. Rainfall decreases from east to west, resulting in different types of prairies, with the tallgrass prairie in the wetter eastern region, mixed-grass prairie in the central Great Plains, and shortgrass prairie towards the rain shadow of the Rockies. Today, these three prairie types largely correspond to the corn/soybean area, the wheat belt, and the western rangelands, respectively. Hardwood forests in this area were logged to extinction in the late 1800s. The majority of the Midwest can now be categorized as urbanized areas or pastoral agricultural areas. Areas in northern Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, such as the Porcupine Mountains and the Ohio River valley are largely undeveloped. Residents of the wheat belt, which consists of the westernmost states of the Midwest, generally consider themselves part of the Midwest, while residents of the remaining rangeland areas usually do not. Of course, exact boundaries are nebulous and shifting. History The Midwest is a cultural crossroads. Starting in the 1790s, American Revolutionary War veterans and settlers from the original Thirteen Colonies moved there in response to Federal government of the United States land grants. The Ulster-Scots Presbyterians of Pennsylvania (often through Virginia) and the Dutch Reformed, Quaker, and Congregationalists of Connecticut were among the earliest pioneers to Ohio and the Midwest. By the time of the American Civil War, European immigrants bypassed the East Coast of the United States to settle directly in the interior: German immigrant Lutherans and Jews to Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and eastern Missouri, Swedes and Norwegians to Wisconsin, Minnesota and northern Iowa. Poles, Hungarians, and German Catholics and Jews founded or settled in Midwestern cities. Many German Catholics also settled throughout the Ohio River valley and around the Great Lakes. In the 20th century, African American migration from the Southern United States into the Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Gary, Detroit, and many other cities dramatically, as factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities. The region's fertile soil made it possible for farmers to produce abundant harvests of cereal crops such as corn, oats, and, most importantly, wheat. In the early days, the region was soon known as the nation's "breadbasket". Two waterways have been important to the Midwest's development. The first and foremost was the Ohio River which flowed into the Mississippi River. Spanish control of the southern part of the Mississippi, and refusal to allow the shipment of American crops down the river and into the Atlantic Ocean, halted the development of the region until 1795. The river inspired two classic American books written by a native Missourian, Samuel Clemens, who took the pseudonym Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Today, Twain's stories have become staples of Midwestern lore. Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri is a tourist attraction in the area offering a glimpse into the Midwest of his time. The second waterway is the network of routes within the Great Lakes. The opening of the Erie Canal in 1825 completed an all-water shipping route, more direct than the Mississippi, to New York and the seaport of New York City. Lakeport cities grew up to handle this new shipping route. During the Industrial Revolution, the lakes became a conduit for iron ore from the Mesabi Range of Minnesota to steel mills in the Mid-Atlantic States. The Saint Lawrence Seaway later opened the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean. Inland canals in Ohio and Indiana constituted another great waterway, which connected into the Great Lakes and Ohio River traffic. Because the Northwest Ordinance region, comprising the heart of the Midwest, was the first large region of the United States which prohibited slavery (the Northeastern United States emancipated slaves in the 1830s), the region remains culturally apart from the country and proud of its free pioneer heritage. The regional southern boundary was the Ohio River, the border of freedom and slavery in American history and literature (See: Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe; Beloved, by Toni Morrison). The Midwest, particularly Ohio, provided the primary routes for the "Underground Railroad", whereby Midwesterners assisted slaves to freedom from their crossing of the Ohio River through their departure on Lake Erie to Canada. The region was shaped by the relative absence of slavery (except for Missouri), pioneer settlement, education in one-room free public schools, and democratic notions brought with American Revolutionary War veterans, Protestant faiths and experimentation, and agricultural wealth transported on the Ohio River riverboats, flatboats, canal boats, and railroads. The canals in Ohio and Indiana opened so much of Midwestern agriculture that it launched the world's greatest population and economic boom foreshadowing later "emerging markets". The commodities that the Midwest funneled into the Erie Canal down the Ohio River contributed to the wealth of New York City, which overtook Boston and Philadelphia. New York State would proudly boast of the Midwest as its "inland empire"; thus, New York would become known as the Empire State. The Midwest was predominantly rural at the time of the American Civil War, dotted with small farms across Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, but industrialization, immigration, and urbanization fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial progress became the Great Lakes states of the Midwest. German, Scandinavian, Slavic and African American immigration into the Midwest continued to bolster the population there in the 19th and 20th centuries, though generally the Midwest remains a predominantly diverse, Protestant region. Large concentrations of Catholics are found in larger cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Milwaukee, and St. Louis because of Irish, Italian, and Polish immigration in the 19th century. Cleveland also has one of the nation's highest Jewish-American populations per capita of all major U.S. cities. Large Amish communities are found in northern Ohio and northern Indiana. Culture Midwesterners are alternately viewed as open, friendly, and straightforward, or sometimes stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn. Factors that probably affected the shaping of Midwest values include the religious heritage of the abolitionist, pro-education Congregationalists to the stalwart Calvinist heritage of the Midwestern Protestants, as well as the agricultural values inculcated by the hardy pioneers who settled the area. The Midwest remains a melting pot of Protestantism and Calvinism, mistrustful of authority and power. Catholicism is the largest single religious denomination in the Midwest, varying between 19 and 29% of the state populations. Baptists compose 14% of the populations of Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan, up to 22% in Missouri and down to 5% in Minnesota. Lutherans peak at 22-24% in Wisconsin and Minnesota, reflecting the Scandinavian and German heritage of those states as parodied humorously by Garrison Keillor in his Prairie Home Companion. Pentecostal and charismatic denominations have few adherents in the Midwest, ranging between 1 and 7% (although the Assembly of God began in lower Missouri). Judaism and Islam are each practiced by 1% or less of the population, with slightly higher concentrations in major urban areas, such as Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland. Cincinnati was an early cradle of Reform Judaism, and still has a reform rabbinical seminary and hospital. Those with no religious affiliation make up 13-16% of the Midwest population. The rural heritage of the land in the Midwest remains widely held, even if industrialization and suburbanization have overtaken the states in the original Northwest Territory. Given the rural, antebellum associations with the Midwest, further rural states like Kansas have become icons of Midwesternism, most directly with the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. Midwestern politics tends to be cautious, but the caution is sometimes peppered with protest, especially in minority communities or those associated with agrarian, labor or populist roots. The Great Lakes region tends to be more liberal than the less-populated rural areas, and spawned people such as the LaFollette political family, and Communist Party leader Gus Hall. Minnesota in particular is one of the most liberal states in the entire US, producing national politicians such as Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, and Hubert Humphrey and well as protest musician Bob Dylan. Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota & Wisconsin are all "Blue States" (in reference to the 2004 presidential election). Because of 20th-century African American migration from the South, a large African American urban population lives in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Columbus, Indianapolis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Toledo, Dayton, and other cities. The combination of industry and cultures, Jazz, Blues, and Rock and Roll, led to an outpouring of musical creativity in the 20th century in the Midwest, including new music like the Motown Sound and techno from Detroit and house music & the blues from Chicago. Rock and Roll music was first identified as a new genre by a Cleveland radio DJ, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is now located in Cleveland. See also Music of the Midwest/Motown, Detroit, 70s Soul Music, Ohio Players, Kool and The Gang, and Dayton. Today, the wealth of the coastal regions and the growth of the Sunbelt have contributed to a sense of unease in the Midwest. The abandonment by many industries of the Midwest, in favor of the South and overseas, has led some to refer to the Midwest as the Rust Belt. The Midwest remains, with the South, a disproportionately large source of servicemembers for the United States military, and remains a thoroughly patriotic and American center. Today the population of the Midwest is 65,971,974, or 22.2% of the total population of the United States. Education The region contains numerous highly-regarded universities, both public and private. Public
Private Many Midwestern educational institutions were founded in the 1800s as denominational religious schools. Notable private institutions include the University of Chicago -- the leader among United States universities for number of Nobel Prize awards granted to members of the institution (and second highest internationally, behind only Cambridge), University of Notre Dame -- a well-known Catholic educational institution, Northwestern University, Washington University in St. Louis and Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The Midwest also includes several nationally elite liberal arts colleges such as Loyola University Chicago, Carleton College, Grinnell College, Kenyon College, Macalester College, and Oberlin College, and is home to a cluster of other top-ranking colleges including Luther College (Iowa), Xavier University, Creighton University, Marquette University, The University of Findlay, Valparaiso University, the University of Evansville, Taylor University, DePauw University, Hamline University, Hanover College, Bradley University, Beloit College, Depaul University, Capital University, St. Olaf College, Wartburg College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Kalamazoo College, Knox College, Lawrence University, Ohio Wesleyan University, Denison University, Wabash College, The College of Wooster, University of Detroit, and Earlham College. Political trends The Midwest was the origin of one of America's two major political parties, the Republican Party, which was formed in the 1850s and included opposition to the spread of slavery into new states as one of its agendas. The rural Midwest is a Republican stronghold to this day, and Hamilton County, the home of Cincinnati, is one of the few urban counties in America which voted predominantly Republican at the close of the 20th century. From the Civil War to the Depression and World War II, Midwestern Republicans dominated American politics and industry, just as Southern Democrat planters dominated antebellum rural America and as Northeastern financiers and academics in the Democratic party would dominate America from the Depression to the Vietnam War and the height of the Cold War. In some upper midwestern states, such as Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan the story is quite different. Illinois is currently dominated heavily by the Democratic Party, as the state has preferred the Democratic presidential candidate by a significant margin in the past 4 elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004). The same is true of Michigan and Wisconsin, which also currently have a Democratic governor and two Democratic senators. Minnesota has voted in favor of the Democratic party for president longer than any other state (excluding the District of Columbia). Minnesota was actually the only state among the 50 states (along with Washington, D.C.) of the U.S. to vote for Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in 1984 (Minnesota is Mondale's home state). In the latter two states, however, the recent Democratic pluralities have often been fairly narrow. The steel industry city of Youngstown, Ohio (known as "Little Chicago" or "The Hoboken of Ohio") has remained a Democratic and cultural microcosm throughout history. It is the birthplace of James Traficant, a controversial, outspoken Democratic former member of the House of Representatives. In 2005, the city elected its first African-American mayor, independent Jay Williams, the first non-Democratic mayor the city has seen in over 80 years. Cleveland, Ohio was the first major U.S. city to elect a Black mayor, Carl B. Stokes and, along with the balance of Cuyahoga County has long been a Democratic stronghold. Around the turn of the 20th century, the region also spawned the Populist Movement in the Plains states and later the Progressive Movement, which largely consisted of farmers and merchants intent on making government less corrupt and more receptive to the will of the people. The Republicans were unified anti-slavery politicians, whose later interests in invention, economic progress, women's rights and suffrage, freedman's rights, progressive taxation, wealth creation, election reforms, temperance and prohibition eventually clashed with the Taft-Roosevelt split in 1912. Similarly, the Populist and Progressive Parties grew out intellectually from the economic and social progress claimed by the early Republican party. The Protestant and Midwestern ideals of profit, thrift, work ethic, pioneer self-reliance, education, democratic rights, and religious tolerance influenced both parties despite their eventual drift into opposition. Perhaps because of their geographic location and heritage of pioneers and Revolutionary War veterans, many Midwesterners have been sometime adherents of Washington's ideal of isolationism, the belief that Americans should not concern themselves with foreign wars and problems. Protectionism was also promoted by Midwestern politicians to protect native industry from free trade. Other Midwesterners, though, led to America greater internationalism, and eventually, belief in free trade. In the current era, Midwesterners wrestle with free trade beliefs along with protecting industrial jobs. The decline of industry in the Midwest led to the "Rust Belt" era when productivity stagnated and employment declined. The loss of jobs among union households and the plight of the unemployed in the inner cities in the Midwest led to greater demands to protect jobs. Linguistic influence The accents of the region are generally distinct from those of the American Northeast and South. They are considered by many to be "standard" American English (known as General American or Standard Midwestern). This accent is preferred by many national radio and television broadcasters, who go so far as to actually have potential broadcasters receive training in speaking "Midwestern". This may have started because many prominent broadcast personalities — such as Walter Cronkite, Johnny Carson, Tom Brokaw, John Madden and Casey Kasem — came from this region and so created this perception. More recently, a National Geographic magazine article (Nov. 1998) attributed the high number of telemarketing firms in Omaha, Nebraska to the "neutral accents" of the area's inhabitants. However, many Midwestern cities are now undergoing the Northern Cities Shift away from the standard accent. However, in some regions, particularly the farther north into the Upper Midwest one goes, a definite accent is detectable, usually reflecting the heritage of the area. For example, Minnesota and western Wisconsin both have a strong Scandinavian accent, which intensifies the farther north one goes. Parts of Michigan have noticeable Dutch-flavored accents. Also, residents of Chicago are recognized to have their own distinctive nasal accent, with a similar accent occurring in parts of Wisconsin, Michigan, Cleveland, and Western New York State. Arguably, this may have been derived from heavy German, Polish, and Eastern European influences in the Great Lakes Region. The most southern parts of the Midwest, generally south of US 50, shows distinctly southern speech patterns. See also | ||||||||||||
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