The Rites of Assent

This book traces the manifold functions of 'America' - as a view of history, a spiritual ideal, a myth of origins and a mode of identity, in the work of major influential writers from the Revolution to the Civil War. The Rites of Assent examines the cultural strategies through which "America" served as a vehicle simultaneously for diversity and cohesion, fusion and fragmentation. Taking an ethnographic, cross-cultural approach, The Rites of Assent traces the meanings and purposes of "America" back to the colonial typology of mission, and specifically (in chapters on Puritan rhetoric, Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the movement from Revival to Revolution) to the legacy of early New England.