At the height of the Civil War in 1863, the Union instated the first-ever federal draft. Patriotism By Proxy develops a new understanding of the connections between American literature and American lives by focusing on this historic moment when the military transformed both. Paired with the Emancipation Proclamation, the 1863 draft inaugurated new relationships between the nation and its citizens. A massive bureaucratic undertaking, it redefined the American people as a population, laying bare social divisions as wealthy draftees hired substitutes to serve in their stead. The draft is the context in which American politics met and also transformed into a new kind of biopolitics, and these substitutes reflect the transformation of how the state governed American life. Censorship and the suspension of habeas corpus prohibited free discussions over the draft's significance, making literary devices and genres the primary means for deliberating over the changing meanings of political representation and citizenship. Assembling an extensive textual and visual archive, Patriotism by Proxy examines the draft as a cultural formation that operated at the nexus of political abstraction and embodied specificity, where the definition of national subjectivity was negotiated in the interstices of what it means to be a citizen-soldier. It brings together novels, poems, letters, and newspaper editorials that show how Americans discussed the draft at a time of censorship, and how the federal draft changed the way that Americans related to the state and to each other.

At the height of the American Civil War in 1863 the Union instated the first ever federal draft. This book examines the draft as a cultural formation and develops a new understanding of the connections between American literature and American lives at this time.

As military campaigns go, the War of 1812 was a disaster. By the time it ended in 1815, Washington, D.C., had been burned to the ground, the national debt had nearly tripled, and territorial gains were negligible. Yet the war gained so much popular support that it ushered in what is known as the "era of good feelings," a period of relative partisan harmony and strengthened national identity. Historian Nicole Eustace's cultural history of the war tells the story of how an expensive, unproductive campaign won over a young nation—largely by appealing to the heart. 1812 looks at the way each major event of the war became an opportunity to capture the American imagination: from the first attempt at invading Canada, intended as the grand opening of the war; to the battle of Lake Erie, where Oliver Perry hoisted the flag famously inscribed with "Don't Give Up the Ship"; to the burning of the Capitol by the British. Presidential speeches and political cartoons, tavern songs and treatises appealed to the emotions, painting war as an adventure that could expand the land and improve opportunities for American families. The general population, mostly shielded from the worst elements of the war, could imagine themselves participants in a great national movement without much sacrifice. Bolstered with compelling images of heroic fighting men and the loyal women who bore children for the nation, war supporters played on romantic notions of familial love to espouse population expansion and territorial aggression while maintaining limitations on citizenship. 1812 demonstrates the significance of this conflict in American history: the war that inspired "The Star-Spangled Banner" laid the groundwork for a patriotism that still reverberates today.

Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series In the late nineteenth century, American teachers descended on the Philippines, which had been newly purchased by the U.S. at the end of the Spanish-American War. Motivated by President McKinley’s project of “benevolent assimilation,” they established a school system that centered on English language and American literature to advance the superiority of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, which was held up as justification for the U.S.’s civilizing mission and offered as a promise of moral uplift and political advancement. Meanwhile, on American soil, the field of American literature was just being developed and fundamentally, though invisibly, defined by this new, extraterritorial expansion. Drawing on a wealth of material, including historical records, governmental documents from the War Department and the Bureau of Insular Affairs, curriculum guides, memoirs of American teachers in the Philippines, and 19th century literature, Meg Wesling not only links empire with education, but also demonstrates that the rearticulation of American literary studies through the imperial occupation in the Philippines served to actually define and strengthen the field. Empire’s Proxy boldly argues that the practical and ideological work of colonial dominance figured into the emergence of the field of American literature, and that the consolidation of a canon of American literature was intertwined with the administrative and intellectual tasks of colonial management.

Since 2008, the American patriot/militia movement—right-wing antigovernment groups who portray themselves as fighting encroaching tyranny—has grown exponentially. Oath Keepers is among the most visible and vocal of these organizations. Formed in 2009, Oath Keepers gained notoriety for its involvement in the Bundy Ranch standoff of 2014 and the Malheur Refuge occupation of 2016. The group gives voice to a recurrent form of American politics: virulent distrust of the government combined with a valorization of violence. Sam Jackson takes readers inside the world of the most prominent antigovernment group in the United States, examining its extensive online presence to discover how it builds support for its political goals and actions. Through an extensive textual analysis of the group’s publications, Jackson explores how Oath Keepers draws on core American political values and pivotal historical moments of conflict and crisis from the Revolutionary War to Waco to Hurricane Katrina to cast its adherents as defenders of liberty. He details how Oath Keepers makes sense of the contemporary United States, how it provides members with models of political behavior, and how it lobbies the wider American public to join the group. The first book-length investigation of the contemporary patriot/militia movement, Oath Keepers sheds new light on what animates groups that pose a growing threat to American security and political culture.