Аннотация

Many historians in the United States take for granted America’s egalitarian origins. But in the last half-century a new notion of American social origins emerged, and in the last decade it has come to dominate historical writing about the character of colonial society. I want to continue the examination of personal accounts of colonial commoners, including the story of a woman. The poor refused to give deference to the privileged in early America and, equally, the privileged could not constitute themselves a coherent elite capable of commanding deference from the poor.