“Sacred to the Memory of Washington”

Abstract

This chapter begins with the exceptionalism that pervades American discourse in the twenty-first century. Proceeding from the unsettled place produced by present-day extremes of nationalism, the author traces the roots of American exceptionalism to the post-Revolutionary period and to the efforts of the upper classes to form a national identity that would unify a fragmented country while maintaining their social position. Two ceramic items from an elite merchant household—a British transferprint plate commemorating the death of Washington and a Chinese porcelain saucer displaying an American-style eagle—are the subjects of this microscalar analysis of national identity production in New York City’s South Street Seaport after the war.