Back then, he was part of a crowd of like-minded young people who converged on Burlington at a time when America seemed to be rewriting its history on the spot. Students, hippies, labor organizers, trust fund kids, urban escapees, impoverished anti-Vietnam War campaigners and environmentalists yearning to be closer to the land — they came because they believed that change was coming and that they had found the right place for a revolution.

Mr. Sanders was barely 30, full of restless energy, with wild curly hair, a brash Brooklyn manner and a mind fizzing with plans to remake the world. Short on money but long on ideas, he found employment where he could, supporting himself through odd jobs like carpentry work.

“Freelance journalist” has always been on the list of things he did before he began running for statewide office, futilely, as a Liberty Union Party candidate in the 1970s. But the description is a bit of a stretch. A look through his journalistic output, such as it was, reveals that he had perhaps a dozen articles published — interviews, essays, state-of-the-nation diatribes — most in The Freeman.

They provide a useful insight into the formative thinking of the man who would go on to become Burlington’s first socialist mayor, then a senator and now a presidential candidate who is drawing crowds in the thousands with his unapologetic leftist message. The writings also reflect the particular mood in this one little spot in Vermont in an era of extraordinary turmoil in America, when the social fabric seemed in danger of ripping apart over issues like the Vietnam War, race and poverty.