Appleby, Joyce. Capitalism and New Social Order: The Republican Vision of the 1790s. New York: New York University Press, 1984.

Summary
This book examines how the market economy influenced the way Americans thought about politics and the human potential for reordering social institutions. Capitalism is thus more than a system for producing and distributing goods; it is also an intellectual stimulus to men and women trying to come to terms with the forces for change in their world. By attending to the material circumstances and the ideas those circumstances supported, she argues that economic changes in the 18th century influenced how Americans thought about government and shaped Jeffersonian republicanism. For example, in the mid-18th century, populations in England and Spain began to grow, requiring a higher demand of grain to feed their populations. As a result of this international demand, more and more American farmers came into the market; food and fibers began to possess a strong commercial value (not just subsistence). “The prospect of prosperity in the grain trade,” for example “could be linked with opportunity for each man to make his own way on his own terms with his own initiative.” In the U.S. opportunities for enterprise grew at a much more rapid rate than the capacity of government to oversee them and ordinary men initiated many of the new trade connections and production schemes. Moreover, the notion of natural economic relations, of self-interested rationally acting individuals, challenged habit and authority (Smith, The Wealth of Nations). The rise of Jeffersonians reflected these changes and their idealized vision of a class-less society, a social order of free and independent men, challenged Federalists and the old “aristocratic” notion of authority as the organizing principle of society. However, Jeffersonian idealism was undermined by the second great awakening, which challenged the secular faith in the natural social order, and the growth of industry that strengthened the tendency of capitalism to divide workers and employers'''. '''

Example: The Jeffersonians coalesced around a set of ideas that propagated less by a class of men – that is, person tied together by common economic interests – than by a kind of man – men attracted by certain beliefs. The common vision – reform of politics and the liberation of the human spirit – made a national democratic party possible in the 1790s. She argues that the modern notion of liberty that undergirds the free enterprise system gave shape and direction to “the Republican Vision of the 1790s.”

See also: Charles Sellers, Christopher Clark, James Henretta