Social Change in America: From the Revolution to the Civil War

by Christopher Clark

From the publisher:
The processes of social change in the late colonial period and early years of the new Republic made a dramatic imprint on the character of American society. These changes over a century or more were rooted in the origins of the United States, its rapid expansion of people and territory, its patterns of economic change and development, and the conflicts that led to its cataclysmic division and reunification through the Civil War.

Christopher Clark's brilliant account of these changes in the social relationships of Americans breaks new ground in its emphasis on the crucial importance of free and unfree labor, regional characteristics, and the sustained tension between arguments for geographic expansion versus economic development.