History Department Colloquium, "'On that Shield!': American Identity and the Constitution in the Early Republic”

In the two hundred and thirty years of its operation, the US federal Constitution's legal meanings have been hotly contested, but so has its place in American culture. Different groups of people have sought to lay claim to the document’s umbrella “We the people” to understand their place in the nation. One way that people thought about the Constitution was by breaking down its component parts into charts. The ways these charts were arranged, printed and disseminated demonstrated desired messaging about the document’s place in American society. They served as a visual reference as well as content explainer for the changing understandings of how the government functioned, but also what it meant to be an American. In this talk, I will explore two charts from the 1820s that give us a glimpse into this intellectual and cultural building of national identity.