Out of the Many, One: Reading the Federal Republic, 1776-1865 Holt, Kerin creator 2008 vii, 224 p. born digital Thesis (Ph.D.) -- Brown University (2008) Gould, Philip director Egan, James reader Armstrong, Nancy reader Nabers, Deak reader Brown University. English sponsor theses This dissertation?"Out of the Many, One: Reading the Federal Republic, 1776-1870"? explores the relationship between early American literature and the political philosophy of federalism in the antebellum period. In contrast to studies that characterize early American writing as a means of uniting citizens through bonds of shared sympathy and similarity, I argue that early American literary texts redefined the terms of national unity and citizenship by encouraging readers to recognize the nation as a collection of distinct, diverse, and disparate regional communities. By reading the novels of Royall Tyler, Timothy Flint, Catharine Sedgwick, and William Gilmore Simms, and the regional periodicals of the American West and South, I trace the relationship between U.S. literature and the federal concept of "unity in difference," showing how literary texts helped promote a "federal literacy" that would alternately support and undermine the terms of union and citizenship in the years between the founding of the republic and the Civil War. federalism American literatureFederal government RPB 20091218 engEnglish10.7301/Z00K26VCIn CopyrightCollection is open for research.dissertations