The Columbiad

Steven Blakemore offers a close reading of The Columbiad within the context of contemporary national debates over the significance of America. In doing so, he helps the reader understand the variety of national discourses that Barlow was promoting, challenging, or subverting. Long neglected, The Columbiad fundamentally engages the core issues and strategies of national self-definition and the creation of a vital republican culture. This book will appeal to all those interested in early American literature, the literature of the early Republic, and American literary nationalism.

Important discoveries made by the late Admiral Dahlgren later in his career ended in an entire reorganization of naval ordnance. These improvements, accompanied by the introduction of steam and corresponding differences in the construction of our men-of-war, essentially modified the navy life of the present day.

Centering around her legendary rescue of Smith from the brink of execution and her subsequent marriage to a white Jamestown colonist, the Pocahontas convention developed into a source of national debate over such broad issues as miscegenation, racial conflict, and colonial expansion.