| Contents |
What the nation was up against -- The farewell -- The threats: geographical, political, international -- Consent, slavery, and the problem of U.S. nationalism -- 1. The apotheosis of George Washington -- Washington dies -- The nation's uncertain future -- Civic texts: creating a new future -- Partisanship -- Nationalism and religion -- Resignation, gratitude, and consent -- 2. Washington's family: slavery and the nation -- George's death and Martha's predicament -- Slavery and the national family -- Washington as abolitionist -- Washington and paternalism -- Toward a consenting republic? -- 3. Mason Locke Weems: spreading the American gospel -- Clergyman to evangelical bookseller: "true philanthropist and prudent speculator" -- Weems and antipartisanship -- Weem's Washington: a primer -- An "ad captandum" book -- Discriminating the "populi" -- Selling Marshall's biography: Weems and civic texts -- 4. Civic texts for slave and free: inventing the autonomous American -- Schoolbooks ad civic texts: the hidden bestsellers of early American literature -- From the Columbian orator to the English reader: the making of the autonomous individual -- Slavery and reading: the specter of uncontrolled slaves -- Civic texts for slaves, self-control, and the inculcation of slave autonomy -- 5. Slavery and the American individual -- Revolution, resistance, and autonomy -- Fit to be free -- The extended legacy of civic texts. |
