Emily Pears - Cords of Affection: Constructing Constitutional Union in Early American History

AMERICAN POLITICAL THOUGHT

Jeremy D. Bailey and Susan McWilliams Barndt

Series Editors

Wilson Carey McWilliams and Lance Banning

Founding Editors

2021 by the University Press of Kansas

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Pears, Emily, author.

Title: Cords of affection : constructing constitutional union in early American history / Emily Pears.

Description: Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, 2021. | Series: American political thought | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2021012547

ISBN 9780700632787 (cloth)

ISBN 9780700632794 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: United StatesPolitics and governmentPhilosophy. | United StatesPolitics and government17831789. | Constitutional historyUnited States. | Representative government and representationUnited States. | CitizenshipUnited States. | RepublicanismUnited States. | Self-interestPolitical aspectsUnited States. | National characteristics, AmericanPolitical aspects. | Political participationUnited States.

Classification: LCC JK31 .P434 2021 | DDC 320.973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012547 .

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The paper used in the print publication is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.481992.

For Thomas Pears Williams

This book began as a masters thesis at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 2011 and has been ushered along the path to publication by countless helping hands. I am very grateful to David Congdon and the University Press of Kansas for taking on this project. David has skillfully guided me through the long and complex publication process and has significantly improved the manuscript along the way. I am grateful in particular for the way he pushed me to reevaluate the relationship between political attachments and the American peoples ongoing pursuit of justice. Four anonymous reviewers for the press also improved the manuscript dramatically through their important criticisms and suggestions.

This book and my scholarship more broadly have been fundamentally shaped by my training as a graduate student at the University of Virginia. I will always be grateful that I found my way to a department that embraced serious historical and qualitative political science research. In the Politics Department, I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Sidney Milkis and Jeffery Jenkins (now at USC), who took on me and my oddball dissertation project. Brian Balogh and the Miller Center National Fellowship Program, now based at the Jefferson Scholars Foundation, supported my work despite my woefully inadequate training in historical research methods.

In 2016, I was offered my dream job and returned to teach at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) in the department that introduced me to the study of American government as an undergraduate. I can think of no greater collection of scholars of American political thought. I have to imagine that when they met me as a college freshman, Ken Miller, Mark Blitz, and Jack Pitney did not think they would still be advising and guiding me sixteen years later. Mark Blitz, Jon Shields, and Charlie Lofgren read early chapter drafts and provided important, critical comments. I met George Thomas only after I returned to teach at CMC, but he has provided immeasurable support ever since. He read numerous early chapters, helped me clarify my thinking on important aspects of the theory presented here, and, through the Salvatori Center, has provided significant funding for my research.