American Patriotism Research Articles

On the Edge of the American Revolution: The Nova Scotia Gazette in 1775

This study focuses on the first Canadian newspaper, the Nova Scotia Gazette, on the eve of the American Revolution. It explores the means by which the paper’s printer, Anthony Henry, was able to continue including both American patriot and British loyalist viewpoints long after polarization in the colonies that became the United States drove printers to solely support the Patriot cause. The analysis identifies printerly practices Henry used to continue publishing multiple perspectives. Also discussed are how differences between the economic, political and social reality of Nova Scotia and that of the American colonies contributed to Henry retaining an impartial stance.

The Inaugural Bible: Presidential Rhetoric and the Politics of Scripture

Abstract This article examines the reception of Scripture in presidential inaugurations, considering both the Bible as a material object within the oath of office ceremony and the Bible as a source of rhetoric within the inaugural address. Data from select presidential archives are also included in this study, especially letters from citizens, which offer a useful glimpse into the public impact of scriptural rhetoric. The broad chronological parameters of the data, which encompass 58 inauguration ceremonies from George Washington to Donald Trump, permit analysis of the varied functions of Scripture within the inaugural ceremony alongside consideration of larger diachronic trends. Analysis of this data underscores the capacity of the Bible to operate as a useful and remarkably flexible political tool that infuses this important transition of power with an aura of sanctity and divine authority. Appropriation of this ancient text functions to sacralize modern political speech, to fan the flames of American patriotism, to reinforce and enhance executive power, to facilitate efforts to persuade the public on a wide range of political agendas, and to furnish a language that justifies a variety of domestic and global policies. The inaugural Bible thus demonstrates the extent to which Scripture remains inextricably woven into the tapestry of American political discourse.

Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy

Most Republicans in a January 2020 survey agreed that "the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than 40% agreed that "a time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands." (In both cases, most of the rest said they were unsure; only one in four or five disagreed.) I use 127 survey items to measure six potential bases of these and other antidemocratic sentiments: partisan affect, enthusiasm for President Trump, political cynicism, economic conservatism, cultural conservatism, and ethnic antagonism. The strongest predictor by far, for the Republican rank-and-file as a whole and for a variety of subgroups defined by education, locale, sex, and political attitudes, is ethnic antagonism-especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The corrosive impact of ethnic antagonism on Republicans' commitment to democracy underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.

‘Everyone Has Secrets’: Revealing the Whistleblower in Hollwood Film in the Examples of <em>Snowden</em> and <em>The Fifth Estate</em>

‘Everyone Has Secrets’: Revealing the Whistleblower in Hollwood Film in the Examples of <em>Snowden</em> and <em>The Fifth Estate</em>

NEWSBOYS: SPANISH AMERICAN PATRIOT CHILDREN AND ‘THE HAZELWOOD MAGAZINE’ IN BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND, 1820s

There was a close connection between the expansion of the press and experiments with new pedagogical strategies in the early industrial age. An expanding public school system required textbooks thus creating a whole new category of demand which appealed to printers who always on the lookout for reliable markets. At the same time, literacy was increasingly understood to be a desirable characteristic for a productive, patriotic citizenry. For a period of five years or so in the 1820s, several sons of important Spanish American patriot leaders were sent abroad to study in a progressive school called Hazelwood, near Birmingham in the heart of industrializing England. While there, the boys and their friends wrote and published a monthly periodical called the Hazelwood Magazine that clearly imitated the contents of professional newspapers andshared the underlying values of the medium.

Hollywood’s Depiction of Italian American Servicemen During the Italian Campaign of World War II

This article analyzes the portrayal of Italian American servicemen in Hollywood films set in Italy during the Italian Campaign of World War II (1943-1945) and produced from the time of the war to the present. Addressing this widely overlooked theme, the study shows how the American film industry perceived and represented one of the largest ethnic groups in the US forces, who were deployed to liberate their ancestral country from Axis control. Special attention is paid to representations of the servicemen's relationship with the Italian population and to their expressions of American patriotism.

“I paid my income tax today”: How the U.S. government used public relations to persuade its citizens to accept a mass tax during World War II

This case study will show how U.S. Treasury Department (Treasury) and U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) officials used public relations strategies and techniques during World War II to ensure public acceptance of the installation of a personal income tax on most Americans, not just the wealthy. To prevent this change from appearing as coercion, U.S. government officials used sacrifice as an overriding message to help persuade Americans to join the taxpayer ranks. Patriotic Americans, the government told the public, would choose to do their part in the war effort by buying victory with their tax dollars. And, it was not just Uncle Sam saying this but popular entertainment figures ranging from singer Danny Kaye to animated character Donald Duck as well.

Judith L. Van Buskirk, Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Pp. 297. $34.95 (cloth).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsJudith L. Van Buskirk, Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. Pp. 297. $34.95 (cloth).Steven J. RamoldSteven J. RamoldEastern Michigan University Search for more articles by this author Eastern Michigan UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 105, Number 1Winter 2020 A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/705266 Views: 128Total views on this site For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution by John Gilbert McCurdy

Reviewed by: Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution by John Gilbert McCurdy Ruma Chopra (bio) Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution john gilbert mccurdy Cornell University Press, 2019 328 pp. We understand that the United States is a military empire through reading newspapers and watching the news. That American soldiers disturb civilian lives in war-torn regions, that they require supplies like cooking utensils or alcohol, or that they behave in undisciplined ways seems obvious and yet, at the same time, distant. This is because we do not see soldiers or soldiers’ barracks or soldiers’ taverns in our most populated US cities. We are not affected by the disturbances or the noise and smells their presence may cause. The military is concealed from civilians and hidden from civilian space. Since our view of the military is determined by a very specific “military geography,” we tend to view the military positively. In his ambitious Quarters: The Accommodation of the British Army and the Coming of the American Revolution, McCurdy argues that our favorable attitude about the military emerges from our day-to-day experience of living in nonmilitarized civilian space—a feature that is not common in other parts of the world and a peculiarity that came out of the Revolutionary era. What distinguishes McCurdy’s work from other texts about quartering and its relationship to the coming of the American Revolution is its continental scope. Quarters explores how the “old” thirteen colonies variously responded to quartering during the Seven Years’ War and roughly the decade following it, to the start of the Revolutionary War. But it also discusses the reactions to quartering troops in newly colonized spaces at the edges of the British empire, such as Nova Scotia and Florida. McCurdy skillfully shows that the “old” colonies became distinguishable from the “new” by their gradual unwillingness to pay for the support of British troops. By 1774, as “new” colonies sought British military protection to secure their liberties, the old thirteen had grown their own military and saw British troops as an infringement. Hence, Quarters implicitly argues that early American patriotism grew out of a sense of home as civilian space that ought to be protected from military outsiders. Like Allan Greer’s recent Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires, and Land in Early Modern North America, which argues that the debates around Indian “savagery” [End Page 503] served to define Europeans as rightfully entitled to American land, Quarters shows that the opposition to quartering British soldiers led colonists to construct a sacrosanct American space and eventually to imagine a nation. The political struggle for American independence hence was a spatial issue, one inextricably tied to quartering British soldiers. Quarters shows how various colonies in the “old” thirteen made concessions to quartering orders and how their voices became increasingly uncompromising after the Seven Years’ War, when the French no longer posed a threat to their safety or an obstruction to westward expansion. Many colonists who had voluntarily built barracks to house British troops during the Seven Years’ War saw no reason to sustain the expense of maintaining them after the war. Those who had welcomed British soldiers as protectors saw no need to pay for their keep by 1770, if not earlier. According to McCurdy, the colonists’ opposition to supplying troops was not strictly driven by financial and opportunistic motives. Rather, the colonists had come to define themselves as spatially separate and as protectors of their own future. As the Revolutionary War began, American colonists were not against quartering troops, only against quartering British troops. British victory during the Seven Years’ War gave white colonists access to western territories formerly claimed by the French. McCurdy takes this familiar issue of westward expansion and shows how the issue of quartering lent it a particular dynamic. As much as describing the reaction to quartering of various US cities such as Philadelphia, Boston, New York, and Charleston, McCurdy also pays attention to “borderland” regions, places such as Detroit where Indians clashed with white settlers seeking claims to western lands. In these backcountry regions, two visions of empire collided. The...

Theatre and Citizenship: Performing the Myths of We, the People

Theatre and CitizenshipPerforming the Myths of We, the People Charlotte M. Canning (bio) Prologue Beautiful evening at a #MAGARally with great American Patriots. Loyal citizens like you helped build this Country and together, we are taking back this Country—returning power to YOU, the AMERICAN PEOPLE. Get out and Vote. GOP! —Donald Trump, Twitter, November 1, 2018 I want to acknowledge what a harrowing time this is in US history, as well as an especially challenging one in which to be thinking about citizenship. The current multiple calamities—election fraud, numerous violations of both the Hatch Act and the emoluments clause,1 the courts packed with unqualified, ideologically driven judges, the appointment of incompetent cabinet officials, and the open embrace of white supremacy are just a few of the horrors the country has endured since 2016—have forced everyone in the United States to confront what the rights and responsibilities of citizens are and should be. Perhaps nothing has prompted that confrontation more than the treatment of immigrants, particularly those seeking to cross the United States’ southern border to request legal asylum. The federal government has separated families at the border, caged children, and opened concentration camps.2Fear is palpable—especially within Latinx communities—and that fear has been met with utter callousness from those who believe the camps are necessary. During a 2018 episode of the conservative television show Fox and Friends, host Brian Kilmeade argued: “Like it or not, these are not our kids.... These are people from another country.”3 The idea that [End Page 12] those who are citizens of a country deserve better treatment or at least different treatment in that country is not new to the twenty-first century nor unique to the United States. The tension between citizen and non-citizen has been part of the United States since its founding. Introduction We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. —Preamble, US Constitution, 1789 From the “beginning,” a word I put in quotations since there are no singular beginnings (only deeply ramified origin stories), citizens were interpolated through live performance. Written in 1776, the Declaration of Independence first reached the public as a broadside created by John Dunlap, a twenty-nine-year-old Irish printer in Philadelphia. The initial run of about two hundred copies was distributed as widely as possible at the time and read aloud to the public. Most of those who within a few years would cease to be subjects of the king and be cast as citizens of a democratic republic never read the Declaration. For them it was not a written document but an oral performance. The ideas it promulgated were embodied by the reader, and the nation it called into being populated by the same multitudes gathered together in towns and cities across the thirteen colonies, each person straining to catch every fateful word. Thirteen years later a more attenuated performance called forth “We the People of the United States” as the Constitution was defended by the Federalist Papers and debated on its way to ratification by the states. In 1789 “the people” could be taken for granted as an already existing discrete body hailed into being by the Declaration. “The people” were vaguely assumed to be citizens as the Constitution did not define them in any practical way. In her general history of the United States, written as an “old-fashioned civics book,” historian Jill Lepore asks, “What is a citizen? Before the Civil War, and for rather a long time afterward, the government of the United States had no certain answer to that question. ‘I have often been pained by the fruitless search in our law books and the records of our courts for a clear and satisfactory definition of the phrase “citizen of the United States,”’ Lincoln’s exasperated attorney general wrote in 1862.”4 Needless to say, Attorney General Edward Bates did not find anything that helped...

Sentiments of a British-American Woman: Esther DeBerdt Reed and the American Revolution, by Owen S. Ireland

Esther DeBerdt Reed is best known for her political activism on behalf of the American patriots, in which she was engaged when she died suddenly just before her thirty-fourth birthday. Almost certainly the author of The Sentiments of an American Woman, an influential call to women’s patriotic action, Esther Reed was almost as well known in 1780 as her friend Martha Washington. In this meticulously researched biography, Owen S. Ireland traces how Reed evolved from a proud Londoner to an ardent American. In so doing, he offers fine-grained insight into how one intelligent elite woman negotiated the processes of courtship, family financial and business decisions, and the challenges and rewards of child-rearing amid the upheavals of the imperial crisis. Reed applied her sharp and subtle political mind to shaping her circumstances to pursue the life she envisioned for herself. Her skills and expectations were shaped by her formative years...

African Americans and the Pacific War, 1941–1945: Race, Nationality, and the Fight for Freedom

African Americans were as outraged as the rest of the American population when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Like in many engagements before, they rushed to volunteer for service. Their reasons varied, from patriotic duty to steady employment to the desire to demonstrate the African American right to equal citizenship afforded them by the Constitution. In African Americans and the Pacific War, 1941–1945, Chris Dixon addresses issues of African American patriotism, masculinity, the duality of their existence in the Jim Crow South and their place in helping other countries maintain colonial empires, and their experiences in the South Pacific during World War II. While the importance of the Double V campaign has been firmly established in the prevailing scholarship, Dixon's analysis of how sexuality framed a large part of how the white hierarchy in the military perceived them is particularly telling. Initially, the fact that African Americans would be mixing with white women in the Allied countries they were stationed in was a concern. Dixon details this at length with respect to Australia, where a White Australia policy existed. As time progressed, however, other white service personnel, American military leaders, and policy makers—not the host countries—expressed concern. Although initially innerved by the presence of African Americans, local whites were happier to have their assistance in saving their home from the Japanese.

Review Article: Comments on William Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England

AbstractWilfrid Prest has written the best biography of Sir William Blackstone, has edited his correspondence, and has produced an impressive range of essays and articles on Blackstone and his works. He has now persuaded a world‐renowned press to produce a new edition of Blackstone's most famous and most influential work, Commentaries on the Laws of England, that provides readers with the first edition of this four‐volume work (1765–9) and all the changes subsequently approved by Blackstone up to the ninth edition, published posthumously in 1783. He has recruited four major legal historians to provide scholarly introductions of great value. This review article seeks to appreciate why Blackstone's Commentaries had such an enormous impact when they first appeared and why they are still subject to serious study to this day. It first shows how Blackstone's academic, legal and political career influenced the structure and content of his Commentaries. It then examines the strengths and the weaknesses of the structure and contents of the Commentaries. Blackstone's four volumes sold well in the English‐speaking world and were generally well reviewed when they first appeared. In England, his discussion on religious toleration did arouse some criticism from radical Dissenters such as Joseph Priestley and his whole approach to the common law and the constitution was savaged by the young Jeremy Bentham. In Ireland and in the North American colonies his comments on the common law were well received, but his views on the sovereignty of parliament aroused the hostility of Irish and American Patriots. Despite this, Blackstone's Commentaries were very widely used by lawyers on the American frontier and they became for decades a major text in American university law schools. For much of the nineteenth century Blackstone's views were criticized in England by Bentham and his utilitarian disciples, who advocated legal reforms, but, from the 1930s onwards, leading lawyers and historians across the world have endeavoured to show that Blackstone was more critical of the legal system of his day and of the laws passed by parliament than Bentham had appreciated.

Reproducing patriotism: An exploration of ‘freedom’ in US history textbooks

This is an exploratory study investigating the production of the meaning of ‘freedom’ in US history textbooks used in high schools across America. Responding to current ideological division, this article investigates the production of American patriotism and identity. This study uses methods from critical discourse analysis to dissect how the language used in the textbooks produces a meaning of ‘freedom’. It then explores the production of patriotic citizens through history/civic education and questions the meaning of ‘freedom’ as a value that sits at the heart of American identity and rhetoric. The quantitative and qualitative results show that the story of ‘freedom’ in the textbooks aims to pacify the violent ruptures of history while instilling in students a sense of duty to ‘freedom’ as a cause and value worth furthering – even if its meaning is not fully explained.

Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution by Judith L. Van Buskirk

Reviewed by: Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution by Judith L. Van Buskirk Dinah Mayo-Bobee (bio) judith l. van buskirk Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution Norman University of Oklahoma Press 2017 312 pp. Although it has taken some time for a vigorously researched study of African American participation in the fight for American independence to appear, Standing in Their Own Light satisfies every anticipation. What we learn about black Americans who supported the Patriot cause is that these men and women have a unique story to tell. Theirs should be considered apart from the history of those who understandably took advantage of Lord Dunmore's 1775 proclamation inviting slaves to fight for the British in return for freedom. Dunmore presented a crucial opportunity for the enslaved to escape bondage, but hundreds of free and enslaved black Americans chose differently. Yet because Dunmore's efforts are considered a blow against slavery, the African Americans who fought for independence and the creation of a new republic shared a more obscure history (35). Even though some of these men and women are mentioned in scholarly works now and then, their appearances are anecdotal and largely detached from major events of the American Revolution (5, 6). Judith L. Van Buskirk reverses this trend. Along with demonstrating that Revolutionary rhetoric transformed the debate over slavery throughout the thirteen colonies, Van Buskirk introduces readers to hundreds of African Americans who fought for and in many cases died for America's [End Page 262] independence. By bringing their service to light the author enables each one to "stand in their own light and shine for everyone to see" (xiv). Van Buskirk's research demonstrates through these Patriots' own words and actions that liberation from colonial rule and the creation of a new nation were important to black men and women who saw their participation in the Revolutionary War as part of their larger, personal fight against racial injustice and slavery. From the beginning to the end of a well-written and coherently arranged book, Van Buskirk surpasses her goal. Utilizing scores of manuscript collections located in repositories across the country, the book relies on period newspapers, military records, pension applications, government documents, letters, wills, and other primary sources. With the use of these sources, Standing in Their Own Light recreates the world of inequality and systemic racism that necessitated African Americans' fight for equality. The book then places their perspectives in the forefront, including disappointment over the nation's failure to end racial discrimination and slavery (73). One of the study's most important contributions is Van Buskirk's detailed record of the part African Americans played in key events that occurred before, during, and after the Revolution. This includes firsthand accounts of their participation in the Boston Massacre (1770), the Boston Tea Party (1773), and the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill (1775). In addition, the book provides a comprehensive geographic assessment of the laws and public sentiments that African Americans circumnavigated in order to join militias and the Continental Army or to participate in noncombat roles (18). After spending a great deal of time researching and becoming familiar with these men and their families the author admittedly formed an emotional attachment to many (xiii). Nonetheless, nowhere in the book does the scholarship sacrifice objectivity for sentimentality. Indeed, where a record exists it is pursued, but where there is none or a lead is truncated, the author acknowledges the dead end and moves along. Nor does the book lionize any of the black protagonists or their white supporters beyond the accolades bestowed by contemporaries who fought alongside or witnessed their achievements on or off of the battlefield (5, 11). An objective approach along with a meticulous process of verification and elimination increases the value of Van Buskirk's scholarship and enables us to comb through the lives and service of African Americans in George Washington's military with confidence. [End Page 263] Revolutionary rhetoric had clearly begun to transform African Americans' outlook about their prospects in a new nation long before Washington welcomed them into his fighting forces. After initially issuing...

Americanization on Native Terms: The Society of American Indians, Citizenship Debates, and Tropes of "Racial Difference"

Americanization on Native Terms:The Society of American Indians, Citizenship Debates, and Tropes of "Racial Difference" Cristina Stanciu (bio) "America" IN OCTOBER 1911 local newspapers in Columbus, Ohio, reported on an unprecedented gathering of Native Americans. The Society of American Indians (SAI) met strategically in Columbus on Columbus Day, an irony the local newspapers failed to notice; but they did report on meetings with local and national dignitaries, as well as an evening of entertainment consisting of "Indian songs and dances and the portrayal of scenes from Indian life."1 The SAI was also greeted by local chapters of patriotic organizations such as the Ohio Daughters of Pocahontas and the Improved Order of Red Men, which presented the attendees with small American flags as souvenirs. This effervescence of American patriotism reached its peak when the SAI members were reported singing the song "America" on top of a mound, followed by "an impromptu war dance on the same elevation."2 As the SAI grew in the following years, it went on to stage its own Native pageants, a growing national attraction, as US nativism was also on the rise.3 But why would a group of professional, articulate Native men and women, wearing citizens' clothing, intone "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," a song so antithetical to the scope of the SAI—"the revival of the natural pride of origin, the pride of the race"—as penned by its first president, Reverend Sherman Coolidge?4 For students of Native history, it is hard, although not impossible, to imagine a few Native men doing a war dance on top of a sacred mound during the SAI's first meeting in Columbus, Ohio. But the Native men and women gathered on the campus of Ohio State University in 1911 had different wars to wage with white America, and their decision to sing a patriotic song before dancing a traditional dance was perhaps indicative of their strategic use of public spaces and their performance on multiple local and national scenes. Contemporary Native critics like Osage literary critic Robert Warrior find this image troublesome, and rightly so; in a special issue dedicated to the SAI's one hundredth anniversary, Warrior argued that, "[a]propos their [End Page 111] widely shared belief in the passing by the wayside of older forms of Indianness, we could caption this photo, ironically, 'The End of History.'" Granted that such concerns are warranted, especially when raised by contemporary Native intellectual historians working through the legacy of an older Native organization for contemporary Native communities, not all the Native people present at the first meeting of the SAI shared the belief in the passing of "older forms of Indianness." Oneida SAI founding member Laura Cornelius Kellogg claimed unambiguously, "I'm not the new Indian; I'm the old Indian adjusted to new conditions" in an attempt to bridge the Old with the New.5 If we think about this episode in the larger context of the early twentieth-century ideological pressures of the Americanization movement, we may also read the irony of this performance and strategic use of Americanness in less apocalyptic terms than Robert Warrior. Yes, the patriotic local societies welcomed the Native intellectual elite to Columbus by presenting them with American flags. However, if we consider the growing numbers of national patriotic societies and nationalist pageants in the first decades of the twentieth century, flag exercises, and other public displays of patriotism triggered by the so-called immigrant invasion and an exacerbated nativism, we could construe this episode as a necessary simultaneous reaffirmation of American nationalism and emergent Native nationalism in the SAI members' performance of both American and Native allegiances—a form of what historian Jeffrey Mirel calls "patriotic pluralism," which I interpret to mean competing nationalisms in a Native context: on the one hand, a deep commitment and allegiance to Native nations; on the other, a strategic commitment to the settler nation.6 As I show throughout this article, the Red Progressives used the immigrant analogy as a common strategy to argue for Indian citizenship: The immigrant can easily become a citizen; why not the Indian? The most politically active and savvy members of the SAI argued for...

The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America by Erik Mathisen

Reviewed by: The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America by Erik Mathisen Madeleine Forrest The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America. By Erik Mathisen. Civil War America. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2018. Pp. xvi, 221. Paper, $24.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-5459-1; cloth, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-3632-0.) American citizenship lacked clear definition until the mid-nineteenth century. Citizenship in the early republic was plagued by generalizations, questions of obligation, and issues regarding its origins. In The Loyal Republic: Traitors, Slaves, and the Remaking of Citizenship in Civil War America, Erik Mathisen explores how this dynamic evolved as the Civil War era redefined what it meant to be an American citizen. Mathisen illuminates in new and valuable ways how “loyalty . . . became part of a larger attempt to redefine citizenship and reckon with the power of nation-states” (p. 2). Through both rhetoric and politics, he argues, “loyalty . . . clarified . . . for the first time, the obligations of American citizenship” (p. 173). Although it [End Page 928] became a necessary marker of allegiance during the war, loyalty faded from political discourse by the mid-1870s with disastrous consequences for African Americans. Using Mississippi as a case study, Mathisen examines the interplay between loyalty and citizenship through local and national lenses by weaving together events from the Deep South with those occurring at the national level. He ultimately argues that, while antebellum Americans understood the rights guaranteed to them as citizens, they were less clear on their own obligations to the national government. The Civil War clarified the issue, if only briefly, and left a lasting impact on how Americans remember the war and how they still think about national loyalty. Mathisen shows that, despite its best efforts, the Mississippi state government was subsumed by the more powerful Confederate state. Although both Mississippi and the Confederate States of America ultimately failed, white southerners who remained loyal to both gained a new understanding of citizenship obligations. Continuing this theme, Mathisen contends that the Confederate army became the main vehicle by which soldiers were turned into loyal citizens, and the army created a bond between white southerners and the Confederacy that can be traced to the formation of the Lost Cause. But even this connection was not without its struggles, as Mathisen notes, because the Confederate government and the state governments were often at odds as to who should be in charge, especially when it came to the command of local militias. In the second half of the book, Mathisen gets to the strongest part of his argument. Here he examines the role loyalty played in defining citizenship for both the Union and the Confederacy. Loyalty had assumed a new level of importance by mid-war as emancipation enabled freedmen to seize loyalty to the Union as an integral step toward gaining full citizenship rights. The loyalty of enslaved men and women, as well as African American soldiers, served as a sharp contrast to the absence of white southern loyalty. Mathisen makes clear that loyalty was hard to define, however. President Andrew Johnson’s required loyalty oaths, for example, made a mockery of his desire to force former slaveholders to repent for their sins. But after Congress took control of Reconstruction, the Union’s focus and energy shifted toward African American protection. Mathisen shows that in this period action, not rhetoric, meant more when proving allegiance. Ultimately, the march toward unification ensured the separation of loyalty from citizenship obligations—a move that unduly benefited white southerners. While Mathisen admits that loyalty’s prominence as a part of citizenship ebbed, he effectively contends that it remains both in Civil War memory and as an important part of American patriotism. The Loyal Republic is a well-researched and thoughtful study that adds much to our understanding of the complex evolving concepts of American citizenship. Mathisen’s focus on the ways the Civil War altered Americans’ understanding of the obligations of citizenship and the role loyalty played in that understanding makes this book a welcome addition to any Civil War scholar’s library. [End Page 929] Madeleine...

The African American Experience in the American Revolution

The African American Experience in the American Revolution Jim Piecuch (bio) Alan Gilbert. Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. xiii + 369 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $17.50 Judith L. Van Buskirk. Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2017. xiv + 297 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, and index. $34.95 The past decade has seen a rejuvenation of interest in the study of African Americans in the American Revolution. Alan Gilbert and Judith L. Van Buskirk continue this trend, offering important new perspectives on the topic in their complementary works. While Gilbert's Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence covers American and British attitudes toward black people and the experiences of African Americans who fought for and against independence, Van Buskirk's Standing in Their Own Light: African American Patriots in the American Revolution focuses on black soldiers who served in the Revolutionary forces, although she acknowledges that the British offered African Americans an alternative that, especially in the southern states, was more attractive than anything offered by the revolutionaries. Van Buskirk fills a major gap in the literature on black Americans' participation in the Revolution. Most studies have devoted the bulk of their attention to African Americans who sought freedom with the British, a topic where sources are more available due in part to the facts that a far larger number of black people opted to stake their futures with the royal army and navy instead of the rebels, that British officials kept better records than did the Americans, and that after winning freedom many former slaves wrote narratives of their wartime experiences, often with the encouragement and assistance of abolitionists in Britain. Van Buskirk notes the lack of sources on the subject of African Americans who fought for the United States, yet manages to produce an excellent account by delving into the pension applications of Revolutionary veterans, carefully sifting to identify black soldiers. She acknowledges that the applications were recorded by white court clerks, which shaped not only [End Page 349] the veterans' statements (for example, no black applicants referred to racist treatment) but were also filtered by the clerks themselves, who may have chosen to rephrase or omit portions of the veterans' testimony. Nevertheless, Van Buskirk's skillful analysis of these documents supplemented by the more familiar accounts of white revolutionaries provides the best study to date on black soldiers' service on behalf of American independence. Before examining African Americans' military service, Van Buskirk briefly reviews the nature of prewar slavery in four colonial regions: South Carolina, Virginia, the Middle Colonies, and Massachusetts. She observes that slaves were held in low regard everywhere, but that southern slavery was particularly harsh. This section is followed by an account of Crispus Attucks, likely a former slave of mixed race who was among the leaders of the protests that resulted in the 1770 Boston Massacre. He was killed in that tumult, and thus became the first black man to die in the colonial struggle with Britain. Van Buskirk goes on to discuss the opportunities presented to black people when war began in 1775. Beginning on the very first day of the conflict, some African Americans took up arms against the British in Massachusetts, while later in the year Virginia's royal governor, Lord Dunmore, offered freedom to rebel-owned slaves who would fight for the king. Those African Americans who had taken part in the fighting at Lexington and Concord and remained with the force besieging the British in Boston were transformed from local militiamen into regular soldiers when Congress assumed control of the troops and they became George Washington's Continental Army. This transition created a dilemma for Washington, Congress, and the state governments regarding the service of African Americans because many southern delegates in Congress opposed the idea of arming black men, seeing such an action as a potential threat to the institution of slavery. After much debate, the result was grudging permission for black soldiers already in the army to be allowed to reenlist. Van Buskirk notes that the...

Cicerón descuartizado, Cicerón en un fractal. Nota sobre el republicanismo contemporáneo

This paper shows how the republican model of Cicero has been transmitted fragmentarily, through the Italian civic humanist tradition (Maquiavelo), the English republican humanism of XVI, XVII and XVIII centuries, and the republicanism of the American patriots, (“neo-republicanism”). The proposals of Pettit and Brugger are analyzed, and a great variety of positions that some consider “republican” are summarily reckoned. Finally, it is maintained that the classic republican model is present in a very fragmented way in contemporary political theories, for these theories are incapable to accept some strong anthropological, ethical and metaphysical theses. Cicero’s model of republicanism appears to us like in a large scale copy or replica, precisely in the political and legal reality of the contemporary world, in its practices and institutions, and in the political function of its theoretical reflections.

Welcome from the Editors

Welcome from the Editors