Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic: The View from Connecticut

During the early years of the American republic, Connecticut’s elite helped to develop a new form of social order, based on voluntary association, replacing the authoritarian, theological hierarchy of the old regime. Social relations, which were once thought fixed in nature by divine sanction, became amenable to the initiatives of the populace. By the antebellum era, Americans had also discovered that social capital could be created through the ordinary activities of people engaged in civil society.