Book Review

Stephan Wolf's political biography of Abraham Yates Jr., a major figure in upstate New York during the revolutionary and confederation years, reflects the interest of contemporary German scholars in the evolution of American society and government. It is a most ambitious probing of Yates, whom the author sees as an exemplar of the emergent middle class. Rising from the obscurity of an Anglo-Dutch family of artisans and yeomen in Albany and the Hudson River area, this talented, opinionated man moved from being a shoemaker to state spokesman of the Anti-Federalists.

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Wolf based his reassessment of this largely forgotten figure on an extensive and very thorough exploration of numerous American archival collections. In the process he unearthed crosscurrents of the interaction of local political personalities in a changing social milieu that freshly illuminates the intricacies of upper New York's factional conflicts. In the case of Yates, individual ability, stubborn determination, and finesse in political organizing helped him achieve. Yet his path, as Wolf delineates it, was often a stony one with inevitable setbacks, since he was independent of a traditional political alliance with the entrenched, conservative landed elite.

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