![\"Gouging\"](\"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-117pinsker\/files\/2014\/10\/Gouging.png\")
<\/a>Backcountry, n. –a rural area or wilderness<\/p>\nTraditional\u00a0US history textbooks typically\u00a0focus on\u00a0North-South sectionalism, because of the overriding importance of the Civil War. \u00a0However, students must never forget that other types of regional divisions\u00a0also seemed quite powerful to\u00a0American contemporaries, such as\u00a0East and West, or tidelands and piedmont, or lowlands and backcountry. \u00a0The idea of the backcountry, in particular, was an especially potent one during the era of the early republic. \u00a0This was a time of rapidly changing social mores, and vast territorial expansion. \u00a0And yet it was also a period marked by relative isolation in communications and transportation. \u00a0Waterways still connected people and places faster than any other means. \u00a0The result was a society in turmoil as its leaders groped their way toward a new, post-revolutionary stability. \u00a0Few academic articles capture that moment, or the essence of the backcountry better than Elliott Gorn’s, \u201cGouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch\u201d: The Social Significance of Fighting in the\u00a0Southern Backcountry,\u201d<\/a> which appeared in the American Historical Review <\/em>in 1985. \u00a0Gorn depicts\u00a0a practical orgy of violence through the stories of the rough-and-tumble fighting culture of the Southern backcountry. \u00a0 Students should be able to explain what\u00a0gouging was and why it was\u00a0significant. Why would Americans, especially white men in the southern backcountry, engage in such behavior and what does it suggest about their changing culture? \u00a0Both Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, the two most important American politicians of the mid-nineteenth century,\u00a0grew up in the backcountry culture dominated by\u00a0southern plainfolk. \u00a0How does their background help explain their political success? \u00a0In an even larger sense, how does the rise and fall of gouging in the backcountry help explain the story of nineteenth-century America? \u00a0Finally, how does the culture of rough-and-tumble fighting compare to the social dynamics of\u00a0modern America?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Backcountry, n. –a rural area or wilderness Traditional\u00a0US history textbooks typically\u00a0focus on\u00a0North-South sectionalism, because of the overriding importance of the Civil War. \u00a0However, students must never forget that other types of regional divisions\u00a0also seemed quite powerful to\u00a0American contemporaries, such … Continue reading