To Organize the Sovereign People

David W. Houpt is Assistant Professor of History at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

Introduction 1. "The Mobility Triumphant": The Revolutionary Regime 2. Mobilizing the Moderates 3. Choppy Beginnings: Launching the Constitution 4. From Opposition to Party 5. Establishing a Democratic Republic Conclusion: Race, the People, and the Legacy of 1808

Focusing on Pennsylvania from 1774 and 1808, Houpt provides an adept critical narrative of the state's political wranglings over Independence, its first constitution, the United States Constitution, and early national disputes among Federalists, Republicans, Quids, and Democrats. He makes skilled and thorough use of manuscripts, newspapers, pamphlets, government documents, and election returns. He is extremely deft at synthesizing the machinations of a complex era and presenting it with succinct clarity.-- "North Carolina Historical Review" To Organize the Sovereign People offers a clear and direct overview of the use of differing types of political mobilization and activity in early republic Pennsylvania. . . Houpt's conclusions mesh well with the wider story of American politics in the transition between the revolutionary era and the first decades of the early republic. -- "H-Early-America" Historians have long maintained that after the highwater mark of its 1776 constitution, a conservative backlash against democracy ensued in Pennsyvania. Challenging this narrative of declension, David Houpt unearths evidence demonstrating the continuing vitality of politics out of doors and in the streets. With the emergence of political parties, Federalists and Republicans channeled popular participation into powerful new forms of political mobilization. In rewriting Pennsylvania history, Houpt convincingly reconceptualizes the larger story of the rise of democratic politics from the time of the American Revolution through the early 1800s. --Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University, author of The Politics of Size: Representation in the United States, 1776 1850 Houpt makes an important contribution to our understanding of the history of democratic self-government. His process-oriented, analytical narrative is the kind of history we now so desperately need. He has illuminated the political pathway real Pennsylvanians followed in real, historical time to create a government for themselves--and to govern those partially, if not fully excluded from their citizen body. There is much to be learned from this history in our own time, as we struggle to define who we are as a people and how (or if) we can fulfill our own (poorly defined) democratic aspirations. --Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia, author of Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood