[Peace-discuss] Historical rhymes

[David Green]

THE FARMER VERSUS THE ELITE -- 8/29/19

   - 0 COMMENTS
   <https://delanceyplace.com/view-archives.php?p=3922#comments>

*Today's encores election -- from The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson
to Lincoln by Sean Wilentz. *Acrimony and bloodshed between American
yeomen-farmers and American elite in pre- and post-Revolutionary America,
culminating in the infamous 'Shays' Rebellion':

"Contrary to still-persistent American myths of rural rugged individualism,
the yeoman households were tightly connected to each other -- and,
increasingly, the outside world. ... But all was not flourishing
tranquility. Especially in backcountry areas, conflicts between and among
yeomen, would-be yeomen, great proprietors and government officials, as
well as combat with Indians, led to continual wrangling and sporadic
violence, all of which worsened after the revolution.

"Much of the conflict concerned access to the land, as farmers seeking
independent land titles found themselves squeezed out by gentlemen who had
exploited their political connections to gain large (sometimes huge),
loosely defined land grants. ...
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Regulation>
*British Royal Governor William Tryon confronts*
*the North Carolina regulators in 1771.*

"Yeomen battled back, with a vehemence born of fear, prejudice, and insular
hatreds -- as well as an admixture of egalitarian ideals. The largest of
the yeoman rebellions before the Revolution, the so-called North Carolina
Regulation, began in 1764. ... The uprising turned into full-scale war
against autocratic eastern gentry rule that ended only when the rebels were
crushed by combined colonial and British forces at the Battle of Alamance
(near present-day Burlington) in 1771. Earlier, New Jersey yeomen defied
land laws that favored their proprietors, and New York settlers rebelled
unsuccessfully to gain rights over land that, as one of them put it, they
had worked 'for nearly 30 years past and had manured and cultivated.' ...
In central Pennsylvania, the 'Paxton Boys,' furious at the lack of military
backing from the colonial assembly against Indian raids, massacred some
government-protected Indians and undertook a menacing march on
Philadelphia. (Government officials led by Benjamin Franklin met with the
protestors and quelled the unrest.) After the Revolution 'Liberty Men' in
central Maine, 'Wild Yankees' in northeastern Pennsylvania, and 'Green
Mountain Boys' in western Vermont all challenged local landlords and the
courts. The most notorious of these struggles culminated in the New England
Regulation of 1786-87 associated with Daniel Shays. ...

"Evangelical religion added a spiritual basis to these fearful egalitarian
politics. Out of the postmillenialist stirrings of New England's Great
Awakening ... came a growing cultural divide between the backcountry and
the seaboard, where more staid, rationalist Anglicans (later Episcopalians)
... held sway. Converts to the evangelical gospel found themselves in a new
direct and individual relation with God that sliced across hierarchies of
wealth and standing but insisted on humankind's utter dependence on the
Lord. By contrast, the gentry and urban mercantile elite were apt to regard
the evangelical effusions of the countryside, ... as ignorant, degraded,
and dangerous to civic order."


------------------------------
[image: | www.delanceyplace.com]
author: Sean Wilentz
title: *The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln*
publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
date: Copyright 2005 by Sean Wilentz
pages: 15-19
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20190906/fd4d098f/attachment.html>