Research Catalog

Gentlemen revolutionaries : power and justice in the new American republic

Title: Gentlemen revolutionaries : power and justice in the new American republic / Tom Cutterham.
Author: Cutterham, Tom, 1987-
Publication: Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Schwarzman Building to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JFE 17-7020	Schwarzman Building - Milstein Division Room 121

Details

Description

x, 191 pages; 25 cm

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.

Subject

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-187) and index.

Contents

Introduction -- Inheritance -- Obedience -- Justice -- Capital -- Rebellion -- Conclusion.

Call Number

JFE 17-7020

ISBN

9780691172668
0691172668

LCCN

2016047704
40027280651

OCLC

980988188

Author

Cutterham, Tom, 1987- author.

Title

Gentlemen revolutionaries : power and justice in the new American republic / Tom Cutterham.

Publisher

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [2017]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-187) and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40027280651

Research Call Number

JFE 17-7020

View in Legacy Catalog