The Midlands

The moderate middle, founded by Quakers on a principle of leaving people alone. William Penn's colony from 1681 guaranteed freedom of worship to anyone believing in God, refused to establish a church, and made no attempt to impose a single culture - which drew Germans in such numbers that they were a third of Pennsylvania's population by the revolution, alongside Scots-Irish, Welsh, Huguenots, Moravians, Mennonites and Amish. That pluralism is the region's defining feature and its export: the Midlands pattern spread west through southern Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa into the lower Midwest, producing a belt of mixed-ethnicity farming communities with weak central institutions, strong local ones, and an aversion to ideological politics from either direction. Philadelphia was the largest colonial city and the place both the Declaration and the Constitution were written, which is not a coincidence - the compromise temperament was in the room. The region has been the American swing constituency ever since, and presidential campaigns are still decided in it. Quaker abolitionism and the underground railroad ran through it. Its politics remain the least predictable. The region runs from southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey west through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa and into Nebraska. Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect, is still spoken by Amish and Mennonite communities. Its barns and farmsteads follow German rather than English patterns. Ohio and Pennsylvania have decided more presidential elections than any other states. The region has no single dominant church, which is unusual in American religious geography. Its farming belt produces most of the country’s corn and soy.

• Existed: 1680 CE – present
• Type: Entity