Preliminary TOC Prologue: The Strange Death of Silas Deane: The Problem of Selecting Evidence 1. Contact 2. Serving Time in Virginia: The Perspectives of Evidence in Social History 3. The Visible and Invisible Worlds of Salem: Studying Crisis at the Community Level 4. Declaring Independence: The Strategies of Documentary Analysis 5. Material Witness: Hearth and Home in the Material Culture of a Market Economy 6. Jackson's Frontier-and Turners: History and Grand Theory 7. The Madness of John Brown: The Uses of Psychohistory 8. The View from the Bottom Rail: Oral History and the Freedpeople