In this book, Van Hall Beck demonstrates that prior to the development of American political parties in the 1790s, political conflicts reflected differences in the values of the entire society. They were rooted in human circumstances-social, economic, cultural-of all sectors of society, and they displayed an ordered, patterned and persistent quality. To illustrate his assessment, Hall sifts through extensive archival data on 343 towns and plantations in Massachusetts. By comparing rural to urban settings, agricultural to market economies, and differing levels of political and social networking, he effectively ties voting patterns to human circumstances at the town level, and then relates these to the overall social and political order of the Commonwealth.

"Not only does this splendid book unearth much fresh material from so well tilled a field as Massachusetts political history. It also advances an important and provocative interpretation of the evolution of the American party system."--The Journal of American History. "Supersedes everything else written on the Massachusetts politics of the half-century after 1790. It is broadly conceived, detailed, sensitive, and often judicious and persuasive."--The New England Quarterly. Focusing on the gradual acceptance of parties by a fundamentally antipartisan society, and on the advent of social movements inthe 1820s and 1830 and their relation to the formation of mass parties, Formisano demonstrates the role of such factors as class, industrialization, religion, and ideology in party formation.