Contents:AcknowledgmentsIntroduction Chapter 1. A Man of Business Chapter 2. A Man of Pleasure Chapter 3. A Soldier's Life Chapter 4. A Compact of Such Vital Importance Chapter 5. Husband, Father, Neighbor Chapter 6. Entrepreneur Chapter 7. Birth of a Wing Chapter 8. H. Harwood Chapter 9. A Miserable Man Epilogue Appendix 1: Printed Material Referred to in the Harwood Diaries Appendix 2: A Hypothetical Analysis of Hiram Harwood's Medical Problems Notes Index
With keen and often profound insight, Robert Shalhope recovers and narrates the often comic, but ultimately tragic, life of Hiram Harwood, a Vermont farmer struggling against the expectations of patriarchy. Shalhope explores an extraordinarily rich set of diaries to illuminate the interplay of family conflict, partisan politics, and culture wars-revealing the dark corners of rural life in the early American republic. -- Alan Taylor, University of California, Davis This fine book will fascinate American historians and general readers alike. Making wonderful use of an extraordinary document, Shalhope gives us a richly detailed account of life in rural Vermont, showing the familial, economic, political, and religious tensions occasioned by the transition from small-scale, diversified family farming to commercial agriculture in New England. -- James T. Kloppenberg, Harvard University
Robert E. Shalhope is George Lynn Cross Professor of History at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Sterling Price: Portrait of a Southerner, John Taylor of Caroline: Pastoral Republican, The Roots of Democracy: American Culture and Thought, 1760-1800, and Bennington and the Green Mountain Boys: The Emergency of Liberal Democracy in Vermont, 1760-1850, the last published by Johns Hopkins.
Shalhope's new book skillfully analyzes Hiram Harwood's diaries and quotes them liberally, resulting in what might be called a retroactive autobiography of a Vermont farmer who lived in the 1820s and 1830s. -- Tyler Resch Bennington Banner Presents the life of troubled young Harwood, a Bennington, Vermont farmer who struggled to attain his own identity within a restrictive family environment marked by strong patriarchy and family cohesion. Choice A welcome addition to the social history of rural New England. It is also a briskly narrated page turner, whose protagonist is temperamentally unsuited to assume the expected role of patriarch. -- Barbara E. Lacey American Historical Review
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