Description
Book SynopsisIn this lively study, Robert E. Shalhope supplies a fascinating microcosmic view of the rise and triumph of liberal individualism in America and explores its impact on political culture. Selected by Choice Magazine as an Outstanding Academic TitleOriginally published in 1996. Americans who lived between the Revolution and Civil War felt the brunt of resounding and sometimes frightening changes, which together eventually influenced the political culture of early America. In this lively study, Robert E. Shalhope examines one of the changes most difficult to gauge and most controversial among students of the periodthe rise and triumph of liberal individualism in Americaand explores its impact on political culture. Taking Bennington, Vermont, and its environs as a case study, Shalhope untangles the clash among three competing elements in the communitythe egalitarian communalism of the Strict Congregationalists; the democratic individualism of the revolutionary Green Mountain Boys; and
Trade ReviewA penetrating study of Bennington, Vermont, that depicts American political identity during the early republic as characterized as much by intraregional as by interregional conflicts . . . An important contribution to the study of American political life that presents the travails of two generations of Americans who sought to restore a national sense of community and, by doing so, reinvented and reinvigorated the nation's political and social institutions.
—
HistoryTable of ContentsAcknowledgements
Introduction
Part I: Origins
Chapter 1: Separate Paths to the Grants
Chapter 2: The Grants in Jeopardy
Chapter 3: The Emergence of the Green Mountain Boys
Part II: Change and Conflict
Chapter 4: Newcomers to the Grants
Chapter 5: Independence
Chapter 6: Divisions Throughout the Town
Part III: A Different Village
Chapter 7: The Next Generation
Chapter 8: Tensions Persist
Chapter 9: Paeans to the Green Mountain Boys
Epilogue: A Monument to Democracy
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index
