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The Baltimore Bank Riot: Political Upheaval in Antebellum Maryland. By Robert E. Shalhope. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 2009. Pp. x, 196. $50.00, ISBN 978-0-252-03480-0.)
Over the course of several nights in August 1835, rioters in Baltimore, Maryland, destroyed the homes of several prominent residents who had been involved in a recent banking scandal. In The Baltimore Bank Riot: Political Upheaval in Antebellum Maryland, Robert E. Shalhope contextualizes these riots in larger themes of civil and political unrest characterizing this period of antebellum American history. Central to the riots was a cultural conflict between advocates of a moral egalitarian society grounded in the sovereignty of the people and an emerging amoral, market-driven culture based on the authority of the state. Shalhope examines...