pThe recovery of the ideas and experiences of William Manning is a major event in the history of the American Revolutionary era. A farmer, foot soldier, and political philosopher, Manning was a powerful democratic voice of the common American in a turbulent age. The public crises of the infant republic--beginning with the Battle of Concord--shaped his thinking, and his writings reveal a sinewy mind grappling with some of the weightiest issues of the nation's founding. His most notable contribution was the first known plan for a national political association of laboring men. That plan, and Manning's broader conclusions, open up a new vista on the popular origins of American democracy and the invention of American politics.ppUntil now, only a few specialists have referred to any of Manning's writings--though always with some wonderment at his sophistication--and his place as a pioneering and exemplary American democrat has been largely unacknowledged. In this new and complete presentati