Introduction

Abstract

This book traces the history of the passport as a documentation of individual and national identity in the United States and how it came to be accepted as a reliable answer to the question “Who are you?” It shows how the passport, originally intended as an official letter of introduction addressed to foreign governments on behalf of American travelers, became entangled in contemporary negotiations over citizenship and other forms of identity documentation. The book provides a loose chronology that follows this important document from the nineteenth century into the early twentieth century, from the strategic use of passport applications by freed slaves and a campaign to allow married women to get passports in their maiden names, to the “passport nuisance” and the controversy over the addition of photographs and other identification technologies on the passport.