To the Hartford Convention: the Federalists and the Origins of Party Politics in Massachusetts, 1789-1815

"... like so many events in the early history of the republic, the Hartford Convention was an incident in the larger eighteenth-century revolution of the Western world. Resounding with the echoes of dis- tant warfare, it was deeply rooted in the half-century- long crisis in Western institutions. It signaled an important moment in the protracted struggle to define the meaning of the republican experiment and to defend it in a hostile and unstable world. And, above all else, it gained inspiration from the native revolution of 1776."--Publisher.