Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.

In this sweeping look at rural society from the American Revolution to the Civil War, Ariel Ron argues that agricultural history is central to understanding the nation’s formative period. Upending the myth that the Civil War pitted an industrial North against an agrarian South, Grassroots Leviathan traces the rise of a powerful agricultural reform movement that fundamentally recast northern farmers’ relationship to economic development, the federal government, and the constitutional compact.

• Ariel Ron, Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era at Southern Methodist University

• Emma Teitelman, Associate Director at the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center and Assistant Research Professor of History at Penn State

• Matthew Karp, Associate Professor of History at Princeton University

• Sally McMurry, Professor Emerita of History at Penn State

• Gautham Rao, Associate Professor of History at American University