| This dissertation is an interpretive history of the Continental Congress that brings the recent cultural historiography of refinement and polite sociability, as well as that of spectacle, parade, and the public sphere, to bear on the delegates' letters, journals, and public papers. “Representative Men” begins by illustrating that the delegates who in 1774 journeyed to Philadelphia to take their places among “the wisest Men upon the Continent” were highly conscious of their public personas. Oratory, dress, manners, even horsemanship—the performative attributes of genteel masculinity—particularly concerned these budding statesmen, mindful as they were of Tory critics who constantly compared them, unfavorably, to their more distinguished British counterparts, the members of Parliament. Similarly, this dissertation observes that, in order for the Revolution to succeed, the Continental Congress needed to project a sovereign and stately political culture to audiences both at home and abroad. If the United States were, in the language of the Declaration, “to assume, among the powers of the earth, [a] separate and equal station,” the Congress, its members readily perceived, would likewise have to assume the trappings and ceremony of a national government. “Representative Men” then demonstrates that this national identity—blazoned across the Congress's army, its currency, its diplomatic protocol, and its public celebrations—was bound up tightly with the characters the delegates crafted for this new American political stage. |
