Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic
324
Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic
324eBook
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Overview
How a massive agricultural reform movement led by northern farmers before the Civil War recast Americans' relationships to market forces and the state.
Recipient of The Center for Civil War Research's 2021 Wiley-Silver Book Prize, Winner of the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award by the Agricultural History Society
In this sweeping look at rural society from the American Revolution to the Civil War, Ariel Ron argues that agricultural history is central to understanding the nation's formative period. Upending the myth that the Civil War pitted an industrial North against an agrarian South, Grassroots Leviathan traces the rise of a powerful agricultural reform movement spurred by northern farmers. Ron shows that farming dominated the lives of most Americans through almost the entire nineteenth century and traces how middle-class farmers in the "Greater Northeast" built a movement of semipublic agricultural societies, fairs, and periodicals that fundamentally recast Americans' relationship to market forces and the state.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781421439334 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 11/17/2020 |
| Series: | Studies in Early American Economy and Society from the Library Company of Philadelphia |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 324 |
| File size: | 13 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Ariel Ron is the Glenn M. Linden Associate Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era at Southern Methodist University.
Ariel Ron is the Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era at Southern Methodist University.
Table of Contents
Front matter
Introduction
In Media Res
Part I: Rise of the Agricultural Reform Movement
1. The Limits of Patrician Agricultural Reform
2. Agricultural Reform as a State-Building Social Movement
Part II: The Making of Northern Economic Nationalism
3. Economic Nationalism in the Greater Rural Northeast
4. Henry C. Carey and the Republican Developmental Synthesis
Part III: Toward a National Agricultural Policy Agenda
5. Mapes's Superphosphates and the Crisis of Agricultural Expertise
6. From "Private Enterprise" to "Governmental Action"
Part IV: Agricultural Reform Vs. the Slaveocracy
7. Movement into Lobby
8. The Sectionalization of National Agricultural Policy
Epilogue
What People are Saying About This
Ariel Ron brings fresh and much-needed attention to the agricultural north, illuminating the essential role agricultural improvement played in nineteenth-century America. Deeply researched and well-argued, Grassroots Leviathan is rich with insight for both economists and historians.
This is an important book—the best one I've ever read on agricultural reform. It's also the best book I've seen on the relationship of farmers to national politics and state formation in the nineteenth century, and a refreshing intervention in the suddenly lively literature on state formation in the mid-nineteenth-century United States.
A stunningly original, stimulating, and important analysis of the antebellum agricultural reform movement as it played a major role in rural culture, sectional antagonism, and the development of the nineteenth-century state. Meticulously researched, well written, and historiographically grounded, Grassroots Leviathan offers a critical corrective to the scholarly focus on urbanization and industrialization as the key phenomena marking the drift into modernity. A bold and significant work of scholarship.
Grassroots Leviathan will be the leading history of the antebellum American state for many years to come. Carefully researched and eloquently written, this book is a remarkable achievement that cements Ron's status as one of the leading political historians of his generation.
Ariel Ron unearths one of mid-nineteenth-century America's most important and least understood social movements—and along the way, almost as a happy accident of the harvest, develops a powerful materialist interpretation of the origins of the Civil War. Rooted in deep scholarship and rich with creative insight, this is an uncommonly illuminating book.
Grassroots Leviathan is a remarkable piece of scholarship. Offering an original take on the origins of the Civil War, one that focuses on the emergence of an agricultural reform movement and its political ramifications, Ron grounds his account in a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of northern farming practices. Ron juggles half a dozen different balls here, and it is a tribute to his analytical acumen and expository skills that readers are able to follow his performance without missing a beat. This is, among other things, a thoroughly enjoyable read. An important book.
A stunningly original, stimulating, and important analysis of the antebellum agricultural reform movement as it played a major role in rural culture, sectional antagonism, and the development of the nineteenth-century state. Meticulously researched, well written, and historiographically grounded, Grassroots Leviathan offers a critical corrective to the scholarly focus on urbanization and industrialization as the key phenomena marking the drift into modernity. A bold and significant work of scholarship.—Tamara Plakins Thornton, State University of New York, Buffalo, author of Nathaniel Bowditch and the Power of Numbers: How a Nineteenth-Century Man of Business, Science, and the Sea Changed American Life
Grassroots Leviathan is a remarkable piece of scholarship. Offering an original take on the origins of the Civil War, one that focuses on the emergence of an agricultural reform movement and its political ramifications, Ron grounds his account in a sophisticated understanding of the political economy of northern farming practices. Ron juggles half a dozen different balls here, and it is a tribute to his analytical acumen and expository skills that readers are able to follow his performance without missing a beat. This is, among other things, a thoroughly enjoyable read. An important book.—James Oakes, author of The Scorpion's Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War
This is an important book—the best one I've ever read on agricultural reform. It's also the best book I've seen on the relationship of farmers to national politics and state formation in the nineteenth century, and a refreshing intervention in the suddenly lively literature on state formation in the mid-nineteenth-century United States.—Reeve Huston, Duke University, author of Land and Freedom: Rural Society, Popular Protest, and Party Politics in Antebellum New York
Grassroots Leviathan will be the leading history of the antebellum American state for many years to come. Carefully researched and eloquently written, this book is a remarkable achievement that cements Ron's status as one of the leading political historians of his generation.—Gautham Rao, American University, author of National Duties: Custom Houses and the Making of the American State
Ariel Ron brings fresh and much-needed attention to the agricultural north, illuminating the essential role agricultural improvement played in nineteenth-century America. Deeply researched and well-argued, Grassroots Leviathan is rich with insight for both economists and historians.—Caitlin Rosenthal, University of California–Berkeley, author of Accounting for Slavery: Masters and Management
Who could have thought there was so much new to say about the sectional crisis and the Civil War? By viewing the period through the eyes of northern farmers, Ariel Ron provides a fresh perspective on both the origins of the conflict and the policies pursued once the Republicans were in power.—Naomi R. Lamoreaux, Yale University, coeditor of Corporations and American Democracy
Ariel Ron unearths one of mid-nineteenth-century America's most important and least understood social movements—and along the way, almost as a happy accident of the harvest, develops a powerful materialist interpretation of the origins of the Civil War. Rooted in deep scholarship and rich with creative insight, this is an uncommonly illuminating book.—Matthew Karp, Princeton University, author of This Vast Southern Empire: Slaveholders at the Helm of American Foreign Policy
Who could have thought there was so much new to say about the sectional crisis and the Civil War? By viewing the period through the eyes of northern farmers, Ariel Ron provides a fresh perspective on both the origins of the conflict and the policies pursued once the Republicans were in power.