“American Empire” explores how the interplay between imperialism and race shaped early American politics, literature, and culture. Through a series of close readings of works by Phillis Wheatley, J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur, William Apess, and James Fenimore Cooper, the essay shows how early American writers wrestled with the continuities and discontinuities between some of the most important concepts that shaped the young republic, in particular the tensions between democracy, empire, freedom, slavery, and race. These internal contradictions between the ideals espoused in political documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and The Federalist, and the policies of racial exploitation and dispossession that drove the nation’s expansionist economic agenda, would come to shape the most important literary works of the day. Writers like Wheatley, Crèvecœur, Apess, and Cooper would seek to make sense of those contradictions in their writings, a legacy that would carry on through the nineteenth century and into the current moment.

It can be easy to forget that the American Revolution included a long and difficult armed conflict. Scholars of the period, in both historical and literary studies, have focused almost entirely on the ideas that drove the American colonists to resist British imperial rule and underpinned the new form of government they adopted in that process, the so-called experiment in democracy. The contrast to the historical memory of the American Civil War is instructive. The symbols and images of the Civil War are for the most part specifically related to the bloodshed of war: battlefields such as Gettysburg and Petersburg and events such as the burning of Atlanta and Richmond have become the enduring emblems of the conflict that divided the states. Although battlefields are not entirely absent from the memorializing of the Revolution, the national imagination has been captured more by political sites such as Independence Hall, Mount Vernon, Monticello, and documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Moreover, images such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence (disseminated widely as a popular engraving), the Liberty Bell, and the Boston Tea Party focus attention on the political motivations for independence and push the war into the background, as if the war were incidental to the Revolution and not essential to its success. War, in other words, remains at the center of the cultural memory of the Civil War, whereas it has been pushed to the margins of the story of the American Revolution.

ALOYSIUS VON G*** WAS THE ENNOBLED SON of a burgher in the service of the Prince of ***; early on, the seeds of his felicitous genius were encouraged by a liberal education. Young, but armed with a broad range of knowledge, he entered the military service of the Prince, who could not long remain unaware of the young man's great talents and even greater aspirations. G*** was in the full bloom of his youth, as was the Prince; G*** was quick and enterprising, and the similarly endowed Prince deeply admired such traits. With his prolific wit and comprehensive knowledge, G*** was able to inspire those around him; through his invariable good cheer he delighted the circles in which he moved; he brought zest and life to every situation that arose. The Prince had an eye for just these virtues, which he himself possessed to a great extent. Everything that G*** undertook, even his lighter pursuits, had a touch of grandeur; obstacles did not deter him, and failure could not shake his perseverance. The value of these virtues was heightened by a pleasing stature; the picture of his good health and his Herculean strength were ennobled by the expressive playfulness of his active mind. His countenance, his gait, and his being exuded an innate, natural majesty, which was tempered by a noble modesty. If the Prince was enchanted by his young companion's intellect, G***'s winning appearance appealed even more irresistibly to his sensual nature.