The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century America

In this acclaimed historical study, Alexander Saxton establishes the centrality of white racism to American politics and culture. Examining images of race at a popular level – from blackface minstrelsy to the construction of the Western hero, from grassroots political culture to dime novels – as well as the philosophical constructions of the political elite, it is a powerful and comprehensive account of the ideological forces at work in the formation of modern America.