To a greater degree than later Americans appreciate, they thought in terms of collectivities rather than individuals. They imagined their society as consisting of families, congregations, the wide array of voluntary organizations who had massed for Lincoln’s funeral processions. They gauged the success of an economy, and a life, more by its ability to produce homes than its ability to produce wealth. Americans gendered the home as a female space, but they also defined manhood around a very simple test: the ability to maintain and protect a family home.
