| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 90.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Money, Morals, and Politics: Massachusetts in the Age of the Boston Associates. By William F. Hartford. (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001. xiv, 286 pp. $55.00, ISBN 1-55553-489-9.)

Bringing something new to a story told many times before is no easy task, and William F. Hartford at least partially succeeds in meeting that challenge in this account of the political activities of Boston's economic elite from 1800 to 1861. The book is both lively and informative, and, while the topics it covers have indeed been much studied, what remains fresh is Hartford's sustained treatment of the larger subject over the entire period in question.

As the title of the book suggests, the primary focus is on the group historians have called (with some dissent) the Boston Associates, who, as Hartford describes them, not only controlled "extensive elements of the antebellum Massachusetts economy" but also "dominated state politics" through their leadership of the Whig party (p. ix). How, he asks, "did the Associates and their Federalist forebears maintain their political authority for so long?" (p. xi). The short answer he offers is that they did what all successful political groups in democracies must do: "fashion a compelling appeal that attracted support from broad elements of the electorate" (pp. xi–xii).

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