Gentlemen revolutionaries : power and justice in the new American republic / Tom Cutterham.
Cutterham, Tom, 1987- author.
2017
E303 .C87 2017eb
Available Online

Items

Linked e-resources

Linked Resource Online Access

Details

Title Gentlemen revolutionaries : power and justice in the new American republic / Tom Cutterham.
Author Cutterham, Tom, 1987- author.
ISBN 9781400885213 (electronic bk.)
1400885213 (electronic bk.)
9780691172668
0691172668
Published Princeton : Princeton University Press, [2017]
Language English
Description 1 online resource (x, 191 pages.)
Call Number E303 .C87 2017eb
Dewey Decimal Classification 303.3/72097309033
Summary "In 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 shaped the ideologies and institutions of the fledgling nation. Tom Cutterham examines how, facing pressure from populist movements as well as the threat of foreign empires, these gentlemen argued among themselves to find new ways of justifying economic and political inequality in a republican society. At the heart of their ideology was a regime of property and contract rights derived from the norms of international commerce and eighteenth-century jurisprudence. But these gentlemen were not concerned with property alone. They also sought personal prestige and cultural preeminence. Cutterham describes how, painting the egalitarian freedom of the republic's 'lower sort' as dangerous licentiousness, they constructed a vision of proper social order around their own fantasies of power and justice. In pamphlets, speeches, letters, and poetry, they argued that the survival of the republican experiment in the United States depended on the leadership of worthy gentlemen and the obedience of everyone else. Lively and elegantly written, Gentlemen Revolutionaries demonstrates how these elites, far from giving up their attachment to gentility and privilege, recast the new republic in their own image"--Provided by publisher.
Bibliography, etc. Note Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note Access limited to authorized users
Source of Description Description based on print version record.
Available in Other Form Gentlemen revolutionaries.
Linked Resources Online Access
Record Appears in Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
Inheritance
Obedience
Justice
Capital
Rebellion.

Browse Subjects

Show more subjects...

Statistics

from
to
Export