Beyond the Farm National Ambitions in Rural New England J. M. Opal "Opal's book beautifully and uniquely captures an important moment when at least a few American men looked up from their plows toward a modern distant horizon, put them down, and walked toward it."--American Historical Review "Opal convincingly takes the reader through the transformations of ambition in rural New England as they intersected with the emergence of liberalism, capitalism, the nation, and modernity."--Journal of the Early Republic "Through the lives of six 'ordinary' rural men who left their fathers'...

Most Americans know Andrew Jackson as a frontier rebel against political and diplomatic norms, a "populist" champion of ordinary people against the elitist legacy of the Founding Fathers. Many date the onset of American democracy to his 1829 inauguration.

Despite his reverence for the "sovereign people," however, Jackson spent much of his career limiting that sovereignty, imposing new and often unpopular legal regimes over American lands and markets. He made his name as a lawyer, businessman, and official along the Carolina and Tennessee frontiers, at times ejecting white squatters from...

The most powerful American of his time, Andrew Jackson saw himself as the people's "great avenger." Yet his ideas also limited the people's sovereignty, imposing one kind of law to inflict one sort of "justice." Drawing from new evidence about Jackson and the southern frontiers, Avenging the People boldly reinterprets the man and his age.