The Democratic Dilemma seeks to explain Vermonters' extraordinary faith and idealism. It argues that Vermonters, as the most radical democrats of the Age of Revolution and conservators of New England's traditions, faced a dilemma: how to reconcile their commitment to competition, toleration, and popular sovereignty with their desire to defend an orderly and pious way of life. By embedding democratic ideals in their institutions and their society. Denominations and political parties clashed, townspeople and church members proved ungovernable, and young people grew wayward and rebellious. An economic and demographic crisis in the 1830s and 1840s compounded these problems by denying many inhabitants what they wanted most independent shops and farms for themselves and their descendants. None of these problems could he solved without restraining spiritual, political, and economic freedom and compromising the principles of Vermont's revolution.

The Age of Democratic Revolution, which spanned the period between the end of the Seven Years' War in 1763 and the middle of the nineteenth century, witnessed a profound transformation in the role of governments and the ways in which religious institutions shaped the morals and spiritual beliefs of the societies that surrounded them. Nowhere was that transformation more dramatic than in Vermont, where the pioneers who settled New England's northern frontier launched the most radical democratic revolution of the era. There a society arose that was formally committed to the ideals of democracy, equality, and religious freedom, and rejected slavery, monarchy, established churches, and imperial domination.