Midwestern United States

Midwest as defined by U.S. Census Bureau

The Midwestern United States (in the U.S. generally referred to as the Midwest) is one of the four geographic regions within the United States of America used by the United States Census Bureau in its reporting.

The region consists of twelve states in the north-central United States: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Ohio and Wisconsin.^[1] A 2006 Census Bureau estimate put the population at 66,217,736. Both the geographic center of the contiguous U.S. and the population center of the U.S. are in the Midwest. The United States Census Bureau divides this region into the East North Central States (essentially the Great Lakes States) and the West North Central States.

Chicago is the largest city in the region, followed by Detroit, Indianapolis, Columbus, and Milwaukee. The Chicago-Joliet-Naperville, IL-IN-WI MSA is the largest metropolitan statistical area, followed by the Detroit-Warren-Livonia, MI MSA, and the Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI MSA.^[2] Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan is the oldest city in the region, having been founded by French missionaries and explorers in 1668.

The term Midwest has been in common use for over 100 years. A variant term, "Middle West", has been in use since the 19th century and remains relatively common.^[3] Another term sometimes applied to the same general region is "the heartland".^[4] Other designations for the region have fallen into disuse, such as the "Northwest" or "Old Northwest" (from "Northwest Territory") and "Mid-America". Since the book Middletown appeared in 1929, sociologists have often used Midwestern cities (and the Midwest generally) as "typical" of the entire nation.^[5] The region has a higher employment-to-population ratio (the percentage of employed people at least 16 years old) than the Northeast, the West, the South, or the Sun Belt states.^[6]

Definition

Midwest as shown by U.S. Census Bureau official map

Traditional definitions of the Midwest include the Northwest Ordinance "Old Northwest" states and many states that were part of the Louisiana Purchase. The states of the Old Northwest are also known as "Great Lakes states". Many of the Louisiana Purchase states are also known as "Great Plains states".

The North Central Region is defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as these 12 states:

• Illinois: Old Northwest, Ohio River, and Great Lakes state.
• Indiana: Old Northwest, Ohio River, and Great Lakes state.
• Iowa: Louisiana Purchase.
• Kansas: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
• Michigan: Old Northwest and Great Lakes state.
• Minnesota: Old Northwest, Louisiana Purchase, Great Lakes state.
• Missouri: Louisiana Purchase, Border state.
• Nebraska: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
• North Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
• Ohio: Old Northwest (Historic Connecticut Western Reserve), Ohio River, and Great Lakes state. The southeastern part of the state is part of Northern Appalachia.
• South Dakota: Louisiana Purchase, Great Plains state.
• Wisconsin: Old Northwest and Great Lakes state.

Physical geography

While these states are for the most part relatively flat, consisting either of plains or of rolling and small hills, there is a measure of geographical variation. In particular, the eastern Midwest near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains; the Great Lakes Basin; the Ozark Mountains of southern Missouri; the rugged topography of Southern Indiana and far Southern Illinois; and the Driftless Area of southwest Wisconsin, southeast Minnesota, and northeast Iowa exhibit a high degree of topographical variety. Prairies cover most of the states west of the Mississippi River with the exception of taiga-clad northern Minnesota. 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. Although hardwood forests in the northern Midwest were clear-cut in the late 1800s, they were replaced by new growth. Ohio and Michigan's forests are still growing. The majority of the Midwest can now be categorized as urbanized areas or pastoral agricultural areas.

Largest Midwestern U.S. cities and urban areas

History

Exploration and early settlement

Rural farmland covers a large area of the American Midwest.

European settlement of the area began in the 17th century following French exploration of the region. The French established a network of fur trading posts and Jesuit missions along the Mississippi River system and the upper Great Lakes. French control over the area ended in 1763 with the conclusion of the French and Indian War. British colonists began to expand into the Ohio Country during the 1750s. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 temporarily restrained expansion west of the Appalachian Mountains, but did not stop it completely.

Early settlement began either via routes over the Appalachian Mountains, such as Braddock Road, or through the waterways of the Great Lakes. Fort Pitt (now Pittsburgh) at the source of the Ohio River was an early outpost of the overland routes. The first settlements in the Midwest via the waterways of the Great Lakes were centered around military forts and trading posts such as Green Bay, Sault Ste. Marie, and Detroit. The first inland settlements via the overland routes were in southern Ohio or northern Kentucky, on either side of the Ohio River, and early such pioneers included Daniel Boone and Spencer Records.

Following the American Revolutionary War, the rate of settlers coming from the eastern states increased rapidly. In the 1790s, American Revolutionary War veterans and settlers from the original states moved there in response to federal government land grants. Among the earliest pioneers to Ohio and the Midwest were the Ulster-Scots Presbyterians of Pennsylvania (often through Virginia) and the Dutch Reformed, Quaker, and Congregationalists of Connecticut.

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. The region soon became known as the nation's "breadbasket".

Development of transportation

Two waterways have been important to the development of the Midwest. The first and foremost was the Ohio River, which flowed into the Mississippi River. Development of the region was halted until 1795 due to Spain's control of the southern part of the Mississippi and its refusal to allow the shipment of American crops down the river and into the Atlantic Ocean.

The Mississippi River inspired two classic books – Life on the Mississippi and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – written by native Missourian Samuel Clemens, who used the pseudonym Mark Twain. His stories became staples of Midwestern lore. Twain's hometown of Hannibal, Missouri is a tourist attraction 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 (1862, widened 1959) opened the Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.

Lake Michigan is shared by four Midwestern states: Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.

Inland canals in Ohio and Indiana constituted another important waterway, which connected with Great Lakes and Ohio River traffic. 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.

Transportation

During the mid-19th century the region got its first railroads, and the railroad junction in Chicago grew to be the world's largest. Even today, a century after Henry Ford, six Class I railroads meet in Chicago.

In the period from 1890 to 1930 many Midwestern cities, towns, villages, and even farms were connected by interurbans, or electrical streetcars. The Midwest had more interurbans than any other region. In 1916, Ohio led all states with 2,798 miles (4502 km), Indiana followed with 1,825 miles (2936 km). These two states alone had almost a third of the country's interurban trackage.^[7] The nation's largest interurban junction was in Indianapolis. During the first decade after the turn of the century the city's 38% growth in population was attributed largely to the interurban.^[8]

Competition with a growing population of automobiles and buses traveling on paved highways led to a decline in the interurban and other railroad passenger business. Henry Ford and Charles Kettering, the inventor of the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline, were both products of the Midwest, as were the Wright brothers.

19th century sectional conflict

The Northwest Ordinance region, comprising the heart of the Midwest, was the first large region of the United States that prohibited slavery (the Northeastern United States emancipated slaves in the 1830s). 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 and 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, democratic notions brought by American Revolutionary War veterans, Protestant faiths and experimentation, and agricultural wealth transported on the Ohio River riverboats, flatboats, canal boats, and railroads.

Industrialization and immigration

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 immigrants to Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and eastern Missouri; Irish immigrants to port cities on the Great Lakes, especially Chicago; Danes, Swedes, and Norwegians to Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and the Dakotas; and Finns to Upper Michigan and northern/central Minnesota. Poles, Hungarians, and Jews settled in Midwestern cities.

The U.S. was predominantly rural at the time of the Civil War. The Midwest was no exception, dotted with small farms all across the region. The late nineteenth century saw industrialization, immigration, and urbanization that fed the Industrial Revolution, and the heart of industrial domination and innovation was in the Great Lakes states of the Midwest, which only began its slow decline by the late twentieth century.

In the 20th century, African American migration from the Southern United States into the Midwestern states changed Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Cincinnati, Gary, Detroit, Minneapolis, and many other cities in the Midwest dramatically, as factories and schools enticed families by the thousands to new opportunities.

History of the term Midwest

As this region lies mostly in the eastern half of the United States, the term "Midwest" can be misleading if one does not understand American history.

The term West was applied to the region in the early years of the country. In 1789, the Northwest Ordinance was enacted, creating the Northwest Territory, which was bounded by the Great Lakes and the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Because the Northwest Territory lay between the East Coast and the then-far-West, the states carved out of it were called the "Northwest". In the early 19th century, anything west of the Mississippi River was considered the West, and the Midwest was the region east of the Mississippi and west of the Appalachians. In time, some users began to include Minnesota, Iowa and Missouri in the Midwest. With the settlement of the western prairie, the new term Great Plains States was used for the row of states from North Dakota to Kansas. Later, these states also came to be considered Midwest by some.

The states of the "old Northwest" are now called the "East North Central States" by the United States Census Bureau and the "Great Lakes" region by some of its inhabitants, whereas the states just west of the Mississippi and the Great Plains states are called the "West North Central States" by the Census Bureau. Today people as far west as eastern Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and southward into Oklahoma sometimes identify themselves with the term Midwest.^[9] Some parts of the Midwest are still referred to as "Northwest" for historical reasons – for example, Minnesota-based Northwest Airlines and Northwestern University in Illinois – so the Northwest region of the country is called the "Pacific Northwest" to make a clear distinction.

Culture

Chicago is the largest city in the Midwest

Detroit is the busiest commercial border crossing in North America.

Indianapolis is the third largest city in the Midwest

Columbus is the fourth largest city in the Midwest

The Gateway Arch of St. Louis is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the Midwest.

Religiously, like most of the United States, the Midwest is mostly Christian.

Roman Catholicism is the largest religious denomination in the Midwest, varying between 19 and 29% of the state populations. Southern Baptists compose 15.42% of Missouri's population ^[10] and a small percentage in other Midwestern states. Lutherans are prevalent in the Upper Midwest, especially in Minnesota.

Judaism and Islam are each practiced by 1% or less of the population, with higher concentrations in major urban areas, such as Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit, and Cleveland. Those with no religious affiliation make up 13–16% of the Midwest's population. Around 50% of the people in the Midwest regularly attend church.^[11]

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.

Because of 20th century African American migration from the South, a large African-American urban population lives in most of the region's major cities, although the concentration is not generally as large as that of the Southern United States. The combination of industry and cultures, jazz, blues, and rock and roll led to an outpouring of musical creativity in the 20th century, including new music genres such as the Motown Sound and techno from Detroit and house & blues music from Chicago. Additionally, the electrified Chicago blues sound exemplifies the genre, as popularized by record labels Chess and Alligator and portrayed in such films as The Blues Brothers, Godfathers and Sons and Adventures in Babysitting. Rock and roll music was first identified as a new genre by a Cleveland radio disc jockey, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is located in Cleveland.

Cultural overlap with neighboring regions

Differences in the definition of the Midwest mainly split between the Heartland and the Great Plains on one side, and the Great Lakes and the Rust Belt on the other. While some point to the small towns and agricultural communities in Kansas, Iowa, the Dakotas, and Nebraska of the Great Plains as representative of traditional Midwestern lifestyles and values, others assert that the declining Rust Belt cities of the Great Lakes – with their histories of 19th- and early-20th-century immigration, manufacturing base, and strong Catholic influence – are more representative of the Midwestern experience.

Certain areas of the traditionally defined Midwest are often cited as not being representative of the region, while other areas traditionally outside of the Midwest are often claimed to be part of the Midwest. These claims often embody historical, cultural, economic or demographic arguments for inclusion or exclusion. Perceptions of the proper classification of the Midwest also vary within the region, and tend toward exclusion rather than inclusion.

Two other regions, Appalachia and the Ozark Mountains, overlap geographically with the Midwest – Appalachia in Southern Ohio and the Ozarks in Southern Missouri. The Ohio River has long been the boundary between North and South and between the Midwest and the Upper South. All of the lower Midwestern states, including Missouri, have a major Southern component, but only Missouri was a slave state before the Civil War.

Western Pennsylvania, which contains the cities of Erie and Pittsburgh and the Western New York city of Buffalo, New York, shares history with the Midwest but overlaps with Appalachia and the Northeast as well.^[12]

Kentucky is rarely considered part of the Midwest, although it can be grouped with it in some contexts.^[13] It is categorized as Southern by the Census Bureau and is usually classified as such especially from a cultural standpoint.^[14][15]

Political trends

One of the two major political parties in the United States, the Republican Party, originated in Ripon, in east-central Wisconsin, in the 1850s. It included opposition to the spread of slavery into new states as one of its agendas.

Midwestern political caution is sometimes peppered with protest, especially in minority communities or those associated with agrarian, labor, or populist roots. This was especially true in the early 20th century, when Milwaukee was a hub of the Socialist movement in the United States, electing three Socialist mayors and the only Socialist Congressional representative (Victor L. Berger) during that time. The metropolis-strewn Great Lakes region tends to be the most liberal area of the Midwest, and liberal presence diminishes gradually as one moves south and west from that region into the less-populated rural areas. The Great Lakes region has spawned politicians such as the La Follette political family, labor leader and five-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs, and Communist Party leader Gus Hall. Minnesota has produced liberal national politicians Paul Wellstone, Walter Mondale, Eugene McCarthy, and Hubert Humphrey, and protest musician Bob Dylan.

The region is now home to many critical swing states that do not have strong allegiance to either the Democratic or Republican party. Upper Midwestern states, such as Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan have proven reliably Democratic. Normally a Republican stronghold, Indiana became a key state in the 2006 mid-term elections, picking up three House Seats to bring the total to five Democrats to four Republicans representing Indiana in the U.S. House. In 2008, Indiana voted for the Democratic presidential candidate for the first time in 44 years. Prior to the 2008 presidential election, Missouri had supported the winning candidate all but once since the beginning of the 20th century.

The state government of Illinois is currently dominated by the Democratic Party. Both Illinois senators are Democrats and a majority of the state's U.S. Representatives are also Democrats. Illinois voters have preferred the Democratic presidential candidate by a significant margin in the past five elections (1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008). The same is true of Michigan and Wisconsin, which also currently have Democratic governors and two Democratic senators.

Iowa is considered by many analysts to be the most evenly divided state in the country, but has leaned Democratic for the past fifteen years or more. Iowa has a Democratic governor, a Democratic Senator, three Democratic Congressmen out of five, has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate in four out of the last five elections, (1992, 1996, 2000, 2008). As of the 2006 mid-term elections, Iowa has a state legislature dominated by Democrats in both chambers.

Minnesota voters have chosen the Democratic candidate for president longer than any other state. Minnesota was the only U.S. state (along with Washington, D.C.) to vote for Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in 1984 (Minnesota is Mondale's home state). In Iowa and Minnesota, however, the recent Democratic pluralities have often been fairly narrow. Minnesota has elected and re-elected a Republican governor, as well as supported some of the strongest gun concealment laws in the nation.

In 2006, Democrats scored major gains across the region. In Iowa, Democrats gained control of the state legislature and held onto the governor's mansion, giving them one-party control of Iowa's government. Elsewhere, Democrats gained control of the Wisconsin Senate, the Michigan Legislature, and the Indiana House. Minnesota, thought to be trending Republican, saw the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL) post double-digit gains in the Minnesota House and win all state-wide elections, save for the gubernatorial race. Democrats also won all all Illinois statewide offices. On a federal level, Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown defeated Republican incumbent Mike DeWine 56-44 for the U.S. Senate. Consistently, Ohio is a battle-ground state in presidential elections—no Republican has won the office without winning Ohio. This trend has contributed to Ohio's reputation as a quintessential swing state.

By contrast, the Great Plains states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas have been strongholds for the Republicans for many decades. These four states have gone for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1940, except for Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide over Barry Goldwater in 1964 and Barack Obama's capture of one electoral vote in Nebraska in 2008. However, North Dakota's Congressional delegation has been all-Democratic since 1987, and South Dakota has had at least two Democratic members of Congress in every year since 1987. Nebraska has elected Democrats to the Senate and as Governor in recent years, but the state's House delegation has been all-Republican since 1995. Kansas has elected a majority of Democrats as governor since 1956 but has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932.

Missouri is considered a "bellwether state". Only twice since 1904 has the Show-Me-State not voted for the winner in the presidential election, in 1956 and in 2008. Missouri's House delegation has generally been evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, with the Democrats holding sway in the large cities at the opposite ends of the state, Kansas City and St. Louis, and the Republicans controlling the rest of the state. Missouri's Senate seats were mostly controlled by Democrats until the latter part of the 20th century, but the Republicans have held one or both Senate seats continuously since the 1976 elections.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the region spawned the Populist movement in the Plains states and later the Progressive movement, which consisted largely 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. The region was a progressive stronghold for much of the early 20th century. Roosevelt's 1912 Progressive Party had the best showing in this region; carrying the states of Michigan, Minnesota, and South Dakota. Robert M. La Follette, Sr.'s 1924 Progressive Party also showed a similar trend as he carried his home state of Wisconsin. 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.

Some in the Midwest favor isolationism, a belief that America should not involve itself in foreign entanglements. This position gained much support from German- and Swedish-American communities and leaders like Robert M. La Follette, Sr., Robert A. Taft, and Colonel Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune.^[16]

Linguistic characteristics

The accents of the region are generally distinct from those of the South and of the urban areas of the American Northeast. To a lesser degree, they are also distinct from the accent of the American West.

The accent characteristic of most of the Midwest is considered by many to be "standard" American English. This accent is preferred by many national radio and television broadcasters.^[17]

This may have started because many prominent broadcast personalities – such as Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Brokaw, John Madden, and Casey Kasem – came from this region and so created this perception. A November 1998 National Geographic article attributed the high number of telemarketing firms in Omaha to the "neutral accents" of the area's inhabitants. Currently, many cities in the Great Lakes region are undergoing the Northern cities vowel shift away from the standard pronunciation of vowels.^[18]

The dialect of Minnesota, western Wisconsin, much of North Dakota and Michigan's Upper Peninsula is referred to as the Upper Midwestern Dialect (or "Minnesotan"), and has Scandinavian and Canadian influences.

See also

Notes

References

• Buley, R. Carlyle. The Old Northwest: Pioneer Period 1815-1840 2 vol (1951), Pulitzer Prize
• Cayton, Andrew R. L. Midwest and the Nation (1990)
• Cayton, Andrew R. L. and Susan E. Gray, Eds. The American Midwest: Essays on Regional History. (2001)
• Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (1992), 1850-1900 excerpt and text search
• Garland, John H. The North American Midwest: A Regional Geography (1955)
• Gjerde, John. Minds of the West: Ethnocultural Evolution in the Rural Middle West, 1830-1917 (1999) excerpt and text search
• Jensen, Richard. The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896 (1971)
• Meyer, David R. "Midwestern Industrialization and the American Manufacturing Belt in the Nineteenth Century", The Journal of Economic History, Vol. 49, No. 4 (Dec., 1989) pp. 921–937.in JSTOR
• Nordin, Dennis S., and Roy V. Scott. From Prairie Farmer to Entrepreneur: The Transformation of Midwestern Agriculture. (2005) 356pp.
• Shannon, "Fred A. The Status of the Midwestern Farmer in 1900". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. Vol. 37, No. 3. (Dec., 1950), pp. 491–510. in JSTOR
• Sisson, Richard, Christian Zacher, and Andrew Cayton, eds. The American Midwest: An Interpretive Encyclopedia (Indiana University Press, 2006), 1916 pp of articles by scholars on all topics covering the 12 states; ISBN 0-253-34886-2 ISBN 978-0-253-34886-9

Primary sources

• Frederick; John T. ed. Out of the Midwest: A Collection of Present-Day Writing (1944) literary excerpts online edition

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