| dc.description.abstract | Historical actors of all ages, races, and genders have grappled with connection between religion and nation since before America existed. But when scholars have studied this connection between religion and nation, specifically the ways that the nation should be governed by religion, the focus has been primarily on white men. This dissertation continues the efforts made by other scholars to fill that hole in the historiography. Specifically, this work focuses on how women in early America discussed Protestant nationhood. Overall Protestant nationhood is the belief that Protestant Christianity points the way to an ideal future for the nation. It is also the belief that the state should be governed by the dictates of Protestant Christianity (as interpreted by the author). It can be seen when authors combine religious and political language to make their argument. In this dissertation I examine six individual women of diverse identities who wrote espoused various forms of Protestant nationhood. In exploring the writings of Phillis Wheatley, Mercy Otis Warren, Catharine Brown, Maria Stewart, Angelina Grimke, and Lucy Virginia French, I look at Protestant nationhood from a multitude of angles in order to form a more complete picture of the variety of women’s practice of Protestant nationhood from the Revolutionary to the Civil War. The themes that emerge from these varied writings include a deference to, or at least acknowledgement of, Revolutionary ideas; an attempt to discern women’s place in shaping a religious nation, specifically relying on women’s inherent religiosity; and a deep concern with the future and legacy of whatever nation they belonged to (whether that be America, the Cherokee Nation, the Black Nation, or the Confederacy). Overall this dissertation seeks to explore how discussions of Protestant nationhood change when we include women as central historical actors. | |
