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