Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions: “Grassroots Leviathan: Northern Agricultural Reform in the Slaveholding Republic”

Event time: 
Wednesday, April 20, 2022 - 5:00pm
Location: 
Luce Hall, Room 203 See map
34 Hillhouse Avenue
New Haven, CT 06520
Event description: 

The Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions presents a Book Talk:

Professor Ariel Ron, Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era History, Southern Methodist University and former YCRI postdoctoral associate:

“Grassroots Leviathan: Northern Agricultural Reform in the Slaveholding Republic.” 

Event will be live and on Zoom

Register here

Yale Center for the Study of Representative Institutions is pleased to invite you to attend a discussion with Professor Ariel Ron (Southern Methodist University – Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era History; former YCRI postdoctoral associate) about his recent award-winning book: Grassroots Leviathan: Northern Agricultural Reform in the Slaveholding Republic (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020).  Professor Mark Peterson (Yale – Edmund S. Morgan Professor of History) and Professor Manisha Sinha (UConn – James L. and Shirley A. Draper Chair in American History) will serve as discussants.  After their brief comments and questions for the author, the discussion will open for a general Q&A with the audience.

Please note: under current campus Covid restrictions, unfortunately only Yale ID holders are permitted to attend the event in-person.  Due to limited seats, if you plan to attend in person, please sign up here.  Refreshments will be served. 

In Grassroots Leviathan, Ron re-centers the transformative but oft-overlooked role of northern farmers in shaping American political and economic history from the era of independence to the time of the Civil War.  He demonstrates how middle-class northern farmers organized into a massive network and movement, demanded reforms in agricultural policy from the federal government, and challenged the political power of southern slavocracy.  Looking at farmers as serious independent agents in the making, unmaking, and remaking of the American republic, Grassroots Leviathan offers an original take on the causes of the Civil War, the rise of federal power, and American economic ascent during the nineteenth century.  Among other distinctions, Professor Ron’s book recently received the Theodore Saloutos Memorial Award by the Agricultural History Society and the Wiley-Silver Book Prize by the Center for Civil War Research.
 

Admission: 
Free but register in advance
Open to: 
General Public