The Expansion of Everyday Life

About

The Expansion of Everyday Life: 1860–1876 portrays ordinary Americans swept up in an era of social and geographical expansion. During this period, five states joined the Union—Kansas, West Virginia, Nevada, Nebraska and Colorado—and the population reached nearly forty million. The westward movement was given a boost by the completion of the first intercontinental railroad, and migration from farms and villages to towns and cities increased, accompanied by a shift from rural occupations and crafts to industrial tasks and trades. Overall, the pursuit of middle-class status became a driving force.

As this book illustrates, however, most people, though affected by the major upheavals of history, simply pursued their personal lives. Sutherland chronicles dating and marriage customs, the dangers and discomforts of mining, and life in the gambling dens, saloons, dance halls, and “cathouses” of the period. Through extensive quotations from diaries, letters, and the popular press, the reader glimpses an American middle class just beginning to grope its way toward the modern world.

Author

Daniel E. Sutherland is a professor of history at the University of Arkansas and the author of several books, including Guerrillas, Unionists, and Violence on the Confederate Home Front and Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville: The Dare Mark Campaign.

Review

“[T]his lively study should inspire renewed interest in the social history of the U.S.”
—Publishers Weekly