Warring for America

“Pluralism, contestation, conflict, and ambiguity mark this volume as it examines the cultural ground before, around, during, and after the War of 1812.”—Journal of American History

“Warring for America is a well-written and well-researched collection that would be a welcomed addition to a university library or to the collection of anyone interested in the cultural history of the Early Republic”—Journal of the Louisiana Historical Association

“Nicely capture[s] the unsettled state of American culture and national identity three to four decades after the Revolution.”—Michigan Historical Review

“Reminding us that any fight for America is a fight over America, this rich collection surveys the rugged terrain of the hard-fought culture wars surrounding the War of 1812. With its depiction of a United States as riven by class and race as much as united against foreign threat, this volume could not be more timely.” — Jeannine DeLombard, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Did the Jeffersonian-Madisonian Republic establish a post-Revolutionary consensus that would unravel with the rise of antebellum sectionalism? The sparkling essays in Warring for America reveal a very different set of stories. Americans were struggling to define their nation, with fragile common formations barely concealing underlying fractures. This volume offers a window onto the most innovative work on the cultural history of the early Republic in the age of Atlantic empire.” — John L. Brooke, Ohio State University

“Warring for America opens up new pathways for scholarship and thought on the early republic. Provocative, deeply engaged, and wide ranging, this set of essays reveals that, in literature, political rhetoric, theater, and art, the very idea of the republic was imagined and reimagined in the years surrounding the War of 1812.” — Michael Meranze, University of California, Los Angeles