Conclusion: Writing To and From the Revolution

The articles in this joint issue do not offer such comfort. Rather, they remind us of the angry hostilities and high costs of founding the United States. By no means were these conflicts restricted to the battlefield, nor were the clashes somehow contained in a political system neatly divided between a British imperial state and a nascent American one. Instead, as these articles demonstrate, struggles emerged everywhere: in the imagination, among settlers, in marital relationships, even in poetry. These articles show us that the struggle to define and confine who “we the people” are was a major facet of the American Revolution. The struggle continues; a truly inclusive democratic republic has never, except in rhetoric, been a part of the American story.