{"product_id":"the-brethren-9780674249165","title":"The Brethren","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 1777, North Carolina farmers planned a coup against local patriots. Brendan McConville shows they were motivated not by Crown loyalty but by love of individual and religious libertyas they understood them. Complicating revolutionary narratives, the plotters feared American independence would usher in the very tyranny it claimed to contest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[McConville’s] use of archival and printed primary sources to discern thoughts and actions of obscure people [is] a rare feat…Important and well worth reading and discussing. -- Carole Watterson Troxler * North Carolina Historical Review *\u003cbr\u003eAn engaging read. In addition to enlightening readers on issues affecting the yeoman population in the Revolution, this book will appeal particularly to those who are interested in religious history as well as aficionados of the Carolinas’ history. -- Kelly Mielke * Journal of the American Revolution *\u003cbr\u003eMcConville’s study is the first to uncover the history of the Brethren, bringing this fascinating story to light…\u003ci\u003eThe Brethren\u003c\/i\u003e is a great example of how scholars can use sparse sources and some imagination to craft a compelling narrative and argument. -- Savannah Flanagan * Past Tense Graduate Review of History *\u003cbr\u003eIn this innovative and vivid history, McConville deploys deft and deep research to recover a long-hidden struggle within the American Revolution for the soul of a new nation. \u003ci\u003eThe Brethren\u003c\/i\u003e reveals a contradictory, divisive, violent, and volatile revolution that pivoted on the allegiance of rural Christians alienated from the more secular leaders of their state. -- Alan Taylor, author of \u003ci\u003eAmerican Revolutions: A Continental History, 1750–1804\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMcConville gives us an American Revolution we have never really seen. \u003ci\u003eThe Brethren\u003c\/i\u003e demonstrates the hidden power of anti-Catholicism, loyalism, slave revolts, and a crucial conflict \u003ci\u003eamong\u003c\/i\u003e patriots. It turns out that many ordinary Americans were determined to save their religion equally from King George III and from America’s own rationalist elite. -- Woody Holton, author of \u003ci\u003eLiberty Is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn reconstructing the Lewellen conspiracy, McConville recovers the complexity and nuance of the American Revolution on the ground. This isn’t a story of idealistic Founding Fathers making the Enlightenment real, but of common people making sense of momentous changes. Written with great verve and flair, this book challenges our assumptions about the nature of the Revolution itself. -- Francis D. Cogliano, author of \u003ci\u003eEmperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMcConville provides a compact and elegant account of conspiratorial resistance to Revolutionary authority by alienated Anglicans in North Carolina, revealing important new perspectives on shifting religious and political orientations in the Revolution. Recovering a world unfamiliar, transient, and disconcerting, \u003ci\u003eThe Brethren\u003c\/i\u003e amply repays readers interested in exploring the confused conflicts and abrupt dislocations of ordinary Americans during the Revolutionary crisis. -- Stephen A. Marini, author of \u003ci\u003eRadical Sects of Revolutionary New England\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Harvard University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":49403569930583,"sku":"9780674249165","price":23.36,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/the-brethren-9780674249165","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}