Forging memory: Hereditary societies, patriotism, and the American past, 1876--1898

The last quarter of the nineteenth century witnessed the establishment of most of the American national icons recognizable today: the flag, national hymns, heroic leaders, and founding documents. In 1876, these objects and events had historical but little contemporary significance; a quarter century later, Americans had created complex rituals around them and treated them reverently. By 1898, these symbols had also accrued expressly political meaning, signifying allegiance to the Republican party, opposition to immigration, suspicion of labor unions, and support of imperialist foreign policy.; My dissertation examines the formation, popularization, and politicization of these national symbols through the societies most responsible for their establishment: the Sons of the Revolution, Sons of the American Revolution, Daughters of the Revolution, and Daughters of the American Revolution. These groups emerged only after 1876 but grew rapidly in the 1890s. They were the largest and most influential past-oriented societies in a past-oriented era.; I argue that the Sons' and Daughters' interest in the Revolution was a half-articulated and deeply felt form of cultural criticism. These groups initially subscribed to a patriotism—in their terms, an ‘Americanism’—critical of the failings within Anglo-American society. They were deeply troubled by the sectional division caused by the Civil War and by Gilded Age materialism. Their celebration of the Revolutionary past served originally as a utopian vision of national possibility.; After the devastating Depression of 1893, though, the Sons' and Daughters' Americanism changed dramatically, becoming a defense of existing governmental institutions. Their rhetoric and symbol-making incorporated increasingly militaristic imagery, emphasized laws rather than freedom, and identified immigration and labor activities as the major threats American society. This new patriotism was epitomized by the Sons and Daughters' support of and involvement in the Spanish-American War. With the war, they reoriented their relationship to the Revolution, seeing it as much as a burden as a birthright. They began to define Americanism in their own contemporary terms.; My dissertation draws on society publications, manuscript histories, personal correspondence and diaries. In many cases, I have been the first or second scholar to examine archival materials.