ABSTRACT
Even as the city prides itself on its frontier past, it also promotes a spirit of progressivism and reform. This derives from its historical location as a center of the Underground Railroad and other reform causes. Levi Coffin, “father of the Underground Railroad,” worked actively in Cincinnati. The Beecher family, including Harriet Beecher (Stowe), moved to Cincinnati and was active in education reform, a movement that supported the Cincinnati publication of McGuffey’s Reader, which standardized American reading education into the twentieth century. The city’s progressive spirit appealed to immigrant groups from Europe, who brought ideas of socialism and labor reform along with their willingness to work and their experience of class structure. In 1860, 45 percent of city inhabitants were foreign-born, the majority of German birth.
