Table of Contents

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

Promotional Information

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

About the Author

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.

Reviews

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