In April 1784 George Washington wrote to his fellow Virginian, Thomas Jefferson, seeking advice. Washington sought Jefferson's opinion regarding the newly created Society of Cincinnati, a fraternal organization created by former officers in Washington's Continental Army. The society had come under considerable public scrutiny and criticism notably because membership in the organization was hereditary. Critics of the society, including Jefferson, feared that its members and their descendants might form an American aristocracy based on inherited status rather than merit. Jefferson counselled Washington that the society went against the spirit of American republicanism. Washington, a lukewarm supporter of the society, took heed of Jefferson's counsel and (unsuccessfully) opposed hereditary membership. Tom Cutterham tells the story of Washington and the Society of Cincinnati in this very fine book on how American gentlemen sought to balance the demands of republican citizenship with their desire to maintain social and political control in the aftermath of the American Revolution.

Gentlemen Revolutionaries can be read on a number of levels. It is a contribution to the historiography of the 1780s which John Fiske long ago dubbed the “critical period” in American history. Despite the significance of the Confederation period, it has been relatively neglected by historians of the Revolutionary era, who have tended to focus their attention on the origins of the Revolution, the War of Independence, or the drafting and ratification of the Constitution. Rather, Gentlemen Revolutionaries offers a close reading of the crucial years between the end of the War of Independence in 1783 and the convening of the Constitutional Convention in May of 1787. By ending with the Constitutional Convention, Cutterham seeks to better understand the events that preceded it. “Removing the Convention from center stage,” he writes, “allows us to uncover the social conflict that lay behind it, and to see the Constitution itself not as a product of timeless wisdom, but as a move in that ongoing struggle” (8). By emphasizing social and political conflict, “that ongoing struggle,” Cutterham contributes to a burgeoning neo-Progressive literature on the Revolutionary era in which the main debate is over the degree to which the American Revolution was a struggle for power within the new American republic. Cutterham's contribution is original, and important, because unlike most neo-Progressives who have studied the democratic majority who sought more political and economic power in the aftermath of the Revolution, he considers those members of the elite, gentlemen (and aspiring gentlemen) who were threatened by democracy and sought to consolidate and preserve their power.

It is against such a backdrop that Cutterham's account of the Society of Cincinnati, one of many such accounts in this book, is significant. Rather than view the society as a benign fraternal organization for veterans, its critics believed it was an attempt by former army officers to consolidate their social and political power. They weren't wrong about that. George Washington was caught between loyalty to the officers who had been loyal to him and the cause of independence, and the belief that the American republic should be grounded in popular sovereignty. He sought to balance these conflicting demands when he asked for Jefferson's advice (likely anticipating Jefferson's answer). This struggle, between the interests of a relatively small group of individuals and the broader demands of the citizenry to exercise power, is at the heart of Cutterham's account. Cutterham's gentlemen are not crude counterrevolutionaries, rather they sought to defend their version of the Revolution in the face of popular challenges from common men (and this story is primarily about men) who sought access to education, western land, and more liberal provisions for debtors and the other fruits of the Revolution. Cutterham seeks to show how self-styled gentlemen sought to reconcile their own interests with the broader demands of living in a republic where common men were sovereign. It was a contest in which much was at stake and in which contingency was important. The triumph of the gentlemen revolutionaries in drafting and ratifying the Constitution was not a foregone conclusion, as Cutterham's focus on the mid-1780s demonstrates.

Gentlemen Revolutionaries is an important study which should command the attention of students of the American Revolution and early republic. It is well written and deeply researched. It makes a complex argument with grace and flair. Tom Cutterham is one of a new generation of historians who are reshaping our understanding of the American Revolution and Gentlemen Revolutionaries is a welcome addition to the literature.