Toward a More Perfect Union: Virtue and the Formation of American Republics

by Ann Fairfax Withington

Overview

In October of 1774, Congress passed a moral code which banned the theater, cock-fights, and horse races. In abiding by this code, Americans built for themselves a character as a virtuous people which set them apart from the "corrupt" British, prepared them to declare independence, and gave them the confidence to establish republican governments. This book uses the specific moral code of Congress as a springboard into the issues generated by the constitutional crisis that precipitated the American Revolution. Withington argues that the moral program, grounded in popular culture, worked as a political strategy to involve people emotionally in the cause and to broaden the reach of resistance to include all classes and both genders. Withington's integration of political history with the materials of popular culture, including cocker manuals, mortuary paraphernalia, prints, caricatures, anagrams, bawdy comedies and sentimental tragedies, and last speeches of condemned criminals leads the reader into a deeper understanding of the formation and significance of the revolutionary ideology

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195361735
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/19/1991
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Lexile:	1390L (what's this?)
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

State University of New York at Albany

Table of Contents

1.	The Declaration of American Independence	3
2.	Plays and Politics	20
3.	The Stage and the Scaffold: Comedies	48
4.	The Stage and the Scaffold: Tragedies	69
5.	Funerals and Politics	92
6.	Mock Funerals and Mock Executions	144
7.	Animals and Politics	185
8.	Enforcement	217
	Epilogue	245
	Index	251

Editorial Reviews

"A convincing account, written with unusual wit and style of the manner in which colonial American self-righteousness and self-denials contributed to a change of sensibility that prepared the way for Independence."—William & Mary Quarterly

"This is a wonderful book, exploiting materials and problems rarely considered in the same frame as the origins of the revolution...An exuberant romp through known and unknown corridors of eighteenth-century culture and politics, this book will entertain and challenge all historians of Revolutionary America."—American Historical Review

"Withington's book is imaginative and carefully argued and makes a major contribution to the ongoing debate over the meaning of American republicanism."—The Historian

"This book happens to be a particularly bright and imaginative exemplar of that genre which repays a careful reading with many original and important insights into our revolutionary past."—Journal of Interdisciplinary History

"An important and readable book by a gifted author."—CHOICE

"Original and deeply interesting...I like this study very much. It is an important book and well-researched. It will add luster to any publisher's list."—Robert Middlekauff, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher