Democratic dissent & the cultural fictions of antebellum America

Introduction: cultural fictions and the rhetorical work of humble irony

The dialectics of assent and dissent, Yankee ingenuity, and the rhetorical politics of abolitionism

Proslavery cultural fictions, white fear, and the rhetoric of serious evils

Senator Robert Walker's Letter on Texas annexation, the South in danger, and the rhetoric of manifest destiny

Whitman's pose, the daguerreotype, and the dialectics of commodification, self-making, and democracy

Conclusion: the paradoxes of democratic representation.