Mobs or the Martial Ideal?: The Mutable Definition of Patriotism in Local Historical Narratives

This article argues that as Americans celebrate the semi-quincentennial, popular understandings of patriotism often diverge from how rural Americans understood and enacted this ideal during the American Revolution. It locates the source of this misunderstanding in the enduring influence of local historical narratives fixed in antiquarian volumes. To demonstrate the cultural work of these volumes, it examines the nature of revolutionary patriotism, engaging the scholarly debate over the extent of its civilian violence, and traces the influence of nineteenth-century cultural trends on the historiography of this ideal.