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"Political culture-United States-History-18th century"
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This Violent Empire
This Violent Empiretraces the origins of American violence, racism, and paranoia to the founding moments of the new nation and the initial instability of Americans' national sense of self.Fusing cultural and political analyses to create a new form of political history, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg explores the ways the founding generation, lacking a common history, governmental infrastructures, and shared culture, solidified their national sense of self by imagining a series of \"Others\" (African Americans, Native Americans, women, the propertyless) whose differences from European American male founders overshadowed the differences that divided those founders. These \"Others,\" dangerous and polluting, had to be excluded from the European American body politic. Feared, but also desired, they refused to be marginalized, incurring increasingly enraged enactments of their political and social exclusion that shaped our long history of racism, xenophobia, and sexism. Close readings of political rhetoric during the Constitutional debates reveal the genesis of this long history.
eBook
Sealed with Blood
The first martyr to the cause of American liberty was Major General Joseph Warren, a well-known political orator, physician, and president of the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts. Shot in the face at close range at Bunker Hill, Warren was at once transformed into a national hero, with his story appearing throughout the colonies in newspapers, songs, pamphlets, sermons, and even theater productions. His death, though shockingly violent, was not unlike tens of thousands of others, but his sacrifice came to mean something much more significant to the American public.Sealed with Bloodreveals how public memories and commemorations of Revolutionary War heroes, such as those for Warren, helped Americans form a common bond and create a new national identity. Drawing from extensive research on civic celebrations and commemorative literature in the half-century that followed the War for Independence, Sarah Purcell shows how people invoked memories of their participation in and sacrifices during the war when they wanted to shore up their political interests, make money, argue for racial equality, solidify their class status, or protect their personal reputations. Images were also used, especially those of martyred officers, as examples of glory and sacrifice for the sake of American political principles. By the midnineteenth century, African Americans, women, and especially poor white veterans used memories of the Revolutionary War to articulate their own, more inclusive visions of the American nation and to try to enhance their social and political status. Black slaves made explicit the connection between military service and claims to freedom from bondage. Between 1775 and 1825, the very idea of the American nation itself was also democratized, as the role of \"the people\" in keeping the sacred memory of the Revolutionary War broadened.
eBook
Enemyship
The Declaration of Independence is usually celebrated as a radical document that inspired revolution in the English colonies, in France, and elsewhere. InEnemyship, however, Jeremy Engels views the Declaration as a rhetorical strategy that outlined wildly effective arguments justifying revolution against a colonial authority-and then threatened political stability once independence was finally achieved.Enemyshipexamines what happened during the latter years of the Revolutionary War and in the immediate post-Revolutionary period, when the rhetorics and energies of revolution began to seem problematic to many wealthy and powerful Americans.To mitigate this threat, says Engles, the founders of the United States deployed the rhetorics of what he calls \"enemyship,\" calling upon Americans to unite in opposition to their shared national enemies.
eBook
The Society of the Cincinnati
In 1783, the officers of the Continental Army created the
Society of the Cincinnati. This veterans' organization was founded
in order to preserve the memory of the revolutionary struggle and
pursue the officers' common interest in outstanding pay and
pensions. Henry Knox and Frederick Steuben were the society's chief
organizers; George Washington himself served as president. Soon,
however, a widely distributed pamphlet by Aedanus Burke of South
Carolina accused the Society of conspiracy. According to Burke, the
Society of the Cincinnati was nothing less than a hereditary
nobility which would subvert American republicanism into
aristocracy. Soon, more critics including John Adams and Elbridge
Gerry joined the fray, claiming among other things that the Society
was a secret government for the United States or a puppet of the
French monarchy. While these accusations were unjustified, they
played an important role in the difficult political debates of the
1780s, including the efforts to revise the Articles of
Confederation. This books explores why a part of the revolutionary
leadership accused another of subversion in the \"critical period,\"
and how the political culture of the times predisposed many leading
Americans to think of the Cincinnati as a conspiracy.
eBook
The King's Three Faces
Reinterpreting the first century of American history, Brendan
McConville argues that colonial society developed a political
culture marked by strong attachment to Great Britain's monarchs.
This intense allegiance continued almost until the moment of
independence, an event defined by an emotional break with the king.
By reading American history forward from the seventeenth century
rather than backward from the Revolution, McConville shows that
political conflicts long assumed to foreshadow the events of 1776
were in fact fought out by factions who invoked competing visions
of the king and appropriated royal rites rather than used abstract
republican rights or pro-democratic proclamations. The American
Revolution, McConville contends, emerged out of the fissure caused
by the unstable mix of affective attachments to the king and a weak
imperial government. Sure to provoke debate, The King's Three
Faces offers a powerful counterthesis to dominant American
historiography.
eBook