The Democratic Dilemma: Religion, Reform, and the Social Order in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont, 1791–1850

The Age of Democratic Revolution, which spanned the period between the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 and the middle of the nineteenth century, witnessed a profound transformation in the role of governments and the ways in which religious institutions shaped the morals and spiritual beliefs of the societies that surrounded them. Nowhere was that transformation more dramatic than in Vermont, where the pioneers who settled New England's northern frontier launched the most radical democratic revolution of the era. There a society arose that was formally committed to the ideals of democracy, equality, and religious freedom, and rejected slavery, monarchy, established churches, and imperial domination.