Cities of the Valley

Cities of the Valley L) avid Stradling' The Ohic)River has liing been a political boundlry . For mcist {) 1 its length and for much of our history ,it separated free ic, il fr·( 1111 slave. It has been : 1 unifying ft,rce As wella great inland highway frcim Pittsburgh ti) t|le Mississippiand its watershed cinstituted a " natural" section that in scime ways trumped the hicctionS created by the Cultural and cc(,nomic iii. sparities (, 1 North and South. In the carly i Hoos, the Ohio Valley meant " the West," with Cincinnati serving as the chief city (, f the regicin. Steamliciats, canals, : ind !· t), ids connected the many cities (, f tile valley, creating a distinct ccon{) 111ic region. Ircmically, in the licc: ides : ifter einancipaticin remcived a central difference separating the cities (in either side t)f tile Ohic,, the unifying fc} rce t, f the river also grew weaker. By the turn of the century, surely most ohio Valley urbanites would ticit have identified the watershed as a fectic}n . 11 311. As histori: in 1-[ enry D. Shapiro has argued, regicins are inventions, ct,nceptualizations of cultural distinctions nci-(, ss get, graphy. Shapiro's work on the inventic}n ot App. 11.ichi. 111 " othe}· ness" reve. llS the mutability of regic,11 f a hlack elite, it provides a good survey of the urban Ohio Valley's history generally, from the fc,unding of cities in the late I7OO5 through the late 1 9003: Trotter selected four cities for his study, with Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and Lc)ilisville being obvious chi,ices. He doesn't explain the inclusion of the 1-tiurth, Evansville, Indiana, but undoubtedly the availability 01 Darrel Bigham's th(, rough study of African Americans in that city was the deciding factor. While regional Ohio Valley urban historiography is limited, schol: irs have conducted extensive research ( 111 individual cities. Not surprisingly, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, long the two largest and Inost important urban areas in the valley,have gained the most attention. Histc, rians, many of them associated with the maic) r universities in the two cities, have been attracted by the richness of these cities' histories, and schcilars have reaped the benefits of wonderfill collectic)ns of di)cuments. One of the nation's leading cultural historians, Daniel A: iron, began his c: ircer With a dissertation on Cincinnati' s formative years. Influential among urban historians since its 1942 completion, it has nly recently been published, with a valuable introduction by Carl Abbott. Cincijinciti: Queen City of che West takes ( in Turner, : is did Urban Frinlier, but using : i different argument. As Abbott summarizes, Hhic) Valley Hist() ry 38 Aaron' s " explicitly cc) ntraTurneriai argument was that 'westerners' in the carly nineteenth century ... were essentially like other Americans. 1 Indeed, the bulk (, f Aaron's w(irk provides evidence that Cincinnati was as sophisticated, literate,and progressive : as Eastern cities but no more t,pen (, r democratic , as Turner wt,uld have us believe. Aarcin : irgues, is carly as the 1820:;many Cincinnati citizens resembled Philadelphi: ins or Bostonians more closely than they did the farmers in the neighliciring cc,unties and rejoiced in the tact." Thus, Aari) 11 minimizes the ic, Ic Qi- Cliiciiiii. itj as the " ecc)ni)1101c And Cultill', 1] center c the Ohic) Valley," and the very idea of ali urban region, distinct from the nation as 21 whole, seems impossible, given the ease (, f LY,mmunication and the centrality of economic interactitin." Aaron closes his study in the i 830, 4, at the beginning (31 the dr, 1111atic gr>wth th, it w(} i!] d mal;in the city. The first tck,k place iii the i 840s with the shift from the age of the : irtisan to the age (, f manufacturing . Cincin!1: iti fic>urished in this era, and by i 860 inly New Y(, rk and Philadelphia had greater industrial outputs. The second shift, to the : ige of modern industry, Liccurred in the 187OS." Iii wit, and Chicago than Cincinnati or Lc,uisville, Pittsburgh h·id beci,me n it iust a part of the industrial heartlani ) Lit its cpitt,mc. Remakiiig of Pittsburgh, Francis Convares...