The Center for Research on Vermont published Green Mountain Scholar: Samuel B. Hand, Dean of Vermont Historians (2018) —a collection of important scholarly writing on Vermont political and legal history and historiography.

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The book includes 30 separate articles on subjects ranging from the Mountain Rule, U.S. Sen. George D. Aiken’s position on ending the Vietnam War, Vermont state politics, the civil rights movement and more. Essays are penned by Sam Hand and Marilyn Blackwell, Deborah Clifford, David Donath, Paul Gillies, Arthur Kunin, Jeffrey Marshall, H. Nicholas Muller III, Jeffrey Potash, Gregory Sanford, Paul Searls, Michael Sherman, Mark Stoler, and Stephen Terry. The Editors of Green Mountain Scholar are H. Nicholas Muller III, Kristin Peterson-Ishaq, J. Kevin Graffagnino, and Richard Watts.

Book Launch Event

On February 8, 2018, about 50 friends and colleagues of Sam Hand gathered at the University in Vermont in February to reflect on Sam’s influence, writings, and unusual personality and release the book. Watch a live video from the event.

“Sam always wanted more from you,” Former Governor Jim Douglas said, “but he was never supercilious…He judged everyone equally.”

“He was no lonely scholar, scratching out text in a dark garret” said Paul Gillies. “More likely you’d find him in the stacks of the Wilbur Collection, or the rooms of the VHS, or the State Archives, talking over ideas with colleagues (and sometimes strangers), making and taking commitments on how to share the work, living a very social, scholarly life.”

These memories and many more were shared by Sam’s former colleagues and students, including stories about Sam lighting the wastebasket on fire with his pipe or his habit of starting a conversation half-way through.

See also: Letters from Paul Gillies (PDF), Elizabeth Dow (PDF), Gregory Sanford (PDF), Garrison Nelson (PDF) and Kristin Peterson-Ishaq.

About Samuel Hand

Samuel B. Hand (1931-2012) was an important and influential Vermont historian.  In a career that spanned nearly half a century, Sam wrote eloquently about a wide range of Vermont subjects and served as mentor to many young colleagues and scholars.  As a history professor at the University of Vermont from 1961 to 1994, he taught hundreds of UVM undergraduate and graduate students about the state’s heritage.  His leadership in state, regional, and national historical organizations included terms as president of the Vermont Historical Society and president of the National Oral History Association.  He was a founding member of and twice directed UVM’s Center for Research on Vermont.  In the community of Vermont scholars and the long history of UVM, no individual has earned or received more respect and affection from his peers than Sam Hand.

For more on Sam, read the introduction to the book or the stories peppered through the book’s contributors’ biographies – many of whom worked closely with Sam as colleagues or former students.

About the Editors

H. Nicholas Muller III

Nick Muller joined the UVM history faculty in 1966 to teach history in the United States, Canada, and Vermont. In his capacities as a professor, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Director of the Living-Learning Center, and co-founder of the Center for Research on Vermont, he worked with Sam Hand. They co-authored a short encyclopedia entry on Vermont, team-taught a survey course in United States history, and co-edited In a State of Nature: Readings in Vermont History (1982).

Kristin Peterson-Ishaq

Born in Decorah, Iowa, Kristin Peterson-Ishaq came to Vermont in 1978 when IBM brought her husband to Essex Junction to join the engineering team. She has lived in the state ever since, a Vermonter by choice. Until her retirement from the University of Vermont in 2010, Peterson-Ishaq had worked for more than three decades as the Coordinator of the Center for Research on Vermont. As Coordinator, she supplied the administrative support that helped establish and manage the Vermont Studies minor, the Research-in-Progress Seminar series, conferences, and the Annual Meeting and awards program. She served as the Managing Editor of the Center’s publications, including several monographs and the Occasional Paper series. A graduate of Georgetown University (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa) with a B.S. in Arabic Language and the American University in Cairo with a master’s degree in Arabic Language and Literature, Peterson-Ishaq has published her English translation of Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris’s al-Haram (The Sinners). With Mousa Ishaq, she has translated into Arabic the poems of R. L. Green, When You Remember Deir Yassin, in a bilingual edition from Fomite Press. With colleagues J. Kevin Graffagnino, H. Nicholas Muller III, and David A. Donath, she co-edited The Vermont Difference: Perspectives from the Green Mountain State.

J. Kevin Graffagnino

J. Kevin Graffagnino is Director of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. As a University of Vermont graduate student in History, he served as Sam Hand's teaching assistant for the Vermont history survey course in the Fall 1977 semester. As curator of UVM's Wilbur Collection of Vermontiana from 1978 to 1995, he worked with Sam and his students to find source material for their research on Vermont topics. Graffagnino also served with Sam on the Vermont Historical Society board of trustees in the early 1980s, and together with Gene Sessions they co-edited the 1999 volume Vermont Voices, 1609 Through the 1990s: A Documentary History of the Green Mountain State.

Richard A. Watts

Richard Watts is the Director of the Center for Research on Vermont. Richard Watts is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research and teaching examines public policy, media studies, and Vermont. Richard is also the Director of the Center for Research in Vermont with a mission to spotlight research from the Vermont "laboratory" - research that provides original knowledge and policy solutions for pressing social, economic, and environmental challenges. Richard earned his PhD in natural resource planning from the Rubenstein School of Natural Resources and the Environment. Richard is the author of Public Meltdown, the Story of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant (2012).

“A masterful account of a pivotal period often overlooked by Vermonters and Vermont historians,” - Randolph A. Roth, Professor of History and Sociology, Ohio State University.

This book examines Vermont’s turn toward modernity in the 1850s by describing a number of key events and the people involved in them during this turbulent time in Vermont’s past. Stories in the book include:

• The legislature’s abandonment of its oversight responsibilities of the new railroad corporations in 1843 that led to significant problems in the next years;
• The existential challenge the legislature faced following the destruction of the statehouse in 1857 in deciding whether Montpelier should remain the capital;
• The rapid development of Rutland and its centrally-located rail yard over the course of a few years representative of the rapid change taking place elsewhere in the state;
• The effects of modernity on agriculture, specifically “The Grass Interest”;
• The history of the important Registration law of 1857 concerning the recording of the state’s health-related statistics (births, marriages, and deaths);
• Alcohol prohibition (1852), opium addiction (present by 1860), and the disproportionate impact of consumption killing many females;
• The origin and history of Vermont’s abortion law of 1846 and its use by women and doctors, together with increased instances of infanticide; and,
• The deeply divided medical profession and its involvement in criminal abortions, to include what appears to be the state’s first serial killer.

Buy this book by sending an email to Richard Watts with your name and address. Although we are not selling the book, donations are welcome. Send a check made out to the University of Vermont, 411 Main Street, Burlington Vermont 05401 or pay online.

Review and Clips

Gary Shattuck’s engaging history of Vermont in the mid-nineteenth century is a masterful account of a pivotal period often overlooked by Vermonters and Vermont historians….  Shattuck’s descriptions of Vermont’s experiences with abortion and infanticide and the creation of its registry system in 1857 are first rate. - Randolph A. Roth, Professor of History and Sociology, Ohio State University

To explain Vermont’s population growth of a minuscule .01% in the 1850s, Green Mountain historians traditionally declared it the beginning of a “long” winter for the state. Gary Shattuck’s Magician has put a blow torch to that perspective as hot as the fire that consumed the Statehouse.  Drawing on fresh sources like the directors’ minutes of the Rutland Railroad, the courts, the Vermont Medical Society, and more, Shattuck reveals a lively society coping with urbanism, new technology, social issues, criminality, and more as it struggled with the traditional reverence for individuality and the need for statewide standards. - H. Nicholas Muller III, Historian and author

We are experiencing a new golden age of Vermont history, and Gary Shattuck is at the head of the parade. Unlike many Vermont historians, Shattuck never accepts any conventional wisdom without rigorous proof. His diligent research reveals evidence that contradicts our nostalgic notions of the past. By the Wand of Some Magician opens up the second half of the nineteenth century as no other study has.  - Paul S. Gillies, Esq., author The Law of the Hills: A Judicial History of Vermont

In By the Wand of Some Magician, Gary Shattuck turns his formidable research skills to a relatively understudied period in Vermont history.  With particular emphasis on the 1850s, Shattuck highlights the tensions and fault lines that afflicted Vermonters as they grappled with enormous changes wrought by the arrival of the railroads. - Alan Berolzheimer, Editor, Vermont Historical Society

About The Author

Gary Shattuck is a historian, former federal prosecutor, and author of a number of books and articles on Vermont history, including Insurrection, Corruption & Murder in Early Vermont: Life on the Wild Northern Frontier (2014), Green Mountain Opium Eaters: A History of Early Addiction in Vermont (2017), and The Rebel and the Tory: Ethan Allen, Philip Skene, and the Dawn of Vermont (2020).

The book is published by the Center for Research on Vermont and White River Press. Eliza Giles designed and produced the book.

In this book, Stephen Terry, a former staffer with Sen. Aiken details Aiken’s life and rise to prominence in the U.S. Senate – examining how his approach to politics stems from his early life as a farmer and horticulturist in Putney, Vermont.

Terry draws from historical records including original recordings of Aiken and then President Lyndon B. Johnson to weave a tale that takes us through Aiken’s early life, his rapid ascendance in Vermont politics, his career as a U.S. Senator and his evolving views of the Vietnam war.

Terry Press Kit (PDF)

Aiken is famous for his bi-partisanship – having breakfast every morning with his Democratic counterpart, Senate Majority leader Mike Mansfield. Aiken always had an English muffin with peanut butter plus coffee. Lola was the only other person at the table with them.

Impeachment: It was Aiken, along with key senior Republicans who decided they could no longer support Nixon after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the release of all Nixon tapes which confirmed Nixon's cover-up crimes. Nixon resigned his office after GOP Senators Barry Goldwater and Hugh Scott told the President, with the backing of Aiken, the Dean of the Senate,  that the Senate would convict Nixon if the full House voted to impeach. That president at that time chose resignation rather than the humiliation of impeachment.

What's inside?

The book contains an interview – conducted by Bernie Sanders – with George Aiken -- published in Vermont Life in 1973. In the interview, Bernie asks Aiken about the changing nature of Vermont, about businessmen running government, about corporations taking over Vermont businesses and about all the presidents that Aiken served with. See SenatorAiken.com.

The book also contains speeches from Aiken, including his “Declare Victory and Go Home” speech and his speech about Nixon’s impeachment process.

Beside Aiken in all those years was his wife Lola Aiken – who grew up the daughter of a Barre Granite worker. Lola was the gatekeeper of all things Aiken and Aiken would not have been half the success he was, without Lola by his side. See this interview with Lola’s friend Cynthia Belliveau, on SenatorAiken.com.

About the Author

Terry is a former Aiken staffer (1969-1975); Reporter and Managing Editor, Rutland Herald; Rutland, (1975-1985), and Senior VP, Green Mountain Power; (1985-2005). He has a degree in philosophy from the University of Vermont. Terry’s previous books include Philip Hoff: How Red Turned Blue in the Green Mountain State (with Tony Marro and Samuel B. Hand) and The Essential Aiken: A Life in Public Service (co-editor: Samuel B. Hand).

Terry’s research assistant on the book is Louis Augeri, a Junior/Senior dual Political Science and History major at UVM. Augeri previously worked closely with Nick Muller as a key member of the research team on Samuel B. Hand: Green Mountain Scholar (Center for Research on Vermont, 2018). Augeri is the winner of the 2018 Green Mountain Scholar Award for outstanding student research.

The companion website was developed by Eliza Giles, the digital director at CRVT. Sophia Trigg, CRVT’s Coordinator, designed the book.

The book is published by the Center for Research on Vermont and White River Press with support from the Silver Special Collections Library and Continuing and Distance Education at the University of Vermont’s George D. Aiken Lecture series.