Description
Book SynopsisIn the years between the Revolutionary War and the drafting of the Constitution, American gentlemen--the merchants, lawyers, planters, and landowners who comprised the independent republic's elite--worked hard to maintain their positions of power. Gentlemen Revolutionaries shows how their struggles over status, hierarchy, property, and control shap
Trade Review"Cutterham has written a bracing book that demands attention.
Gentlemen Revolutionaries is a beautifully written, original, and daring interpretation of the nation's most formative period."
—Patrick Griffin, author of America's Revolution"
Gentlemen Revolutionaries provides an engaging and enlightening study of how elite gentlemen strove and struggled to maintain the illusion of power—that is, of being able to control the social and economic transformations wrought by a revolution that they had unleashed. Cutterham advances our understanding of the reality of historical lives."
—Colin Nicolson, University of StirlingTable of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Inheritance 9 Chapter 2 Obedience 37 Chapter 3 Justice 66 Chapter 4 Capital 94 Chapter 5 Rebellion 123 Conclusion 152 Notes 161 Index 189
