Double characters: The making of American nationalism in Kentucky, 1792--183

This study examines the relationship among national and other identities in Kentucky over the course of the first four decades of statehood to explore broader questions about the development of American nationalism in the new Republic. Historians have noted an apparent paradox regarding the political culture of the early United States, in that while threats of secession resonated from the North, South and West, Americans simultaneously participated in a vibrant nationalist political culture. This study argues that the key to understanding how Americans thought about political identity is to approach nationalism as a political strategy. Through rhetoric and practice, Kentuckians proclaimed their nationality in order to wield the power of the nation-state. Nationalism saturated the Commonwealth as all sorts of people attempted to shape the nation to conform with their own political agendas.;This study investigates how Kentuckians employed nationalism as they negotiated the important political and social issues of the era. As residents of the first state in the trans-Appalachian West, many Kentuckians in the 1790s were antagonistic towards the new federal government to the point of threatening to secede, but they nevertheless proclaimed that such a step would be properly nationalistic. After the election of Thomas Jefferson, both Republicans and Federalists accepted federal authority and worked to define the Union as the embodiment of the nation. Advocates of the War of 1812 saw it as a means of building a national character, but its opponents, prominent among them elite women, asserted that their own rejection of the war was appropriately American. Conflict over the contours of the nation did not end with the coming of peace, as leader Henry Clay's claim that his model of political economy would unify the nation jarred with Kentuckians' observations. Simultaneously, white Kentuckians attempted to construct a racial definition of nationality which excluded Indians and blacks, but Afro-Kentuckians nevertheless related to the ideals of the American Revolution and fought for their application. The South Carolina nullification crisis of 1832--33 opened the door to a new era in which nationalism would become a problematic ideology within Kentucky.