Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-198) and index.
Fugitive slave narratives and Atlantic conspiracies -- The sea is history: apocalypse and the New World romance -- Popular histories and serious fictions: manifest destiny and the Spanish Atlantic world -- Maturin M. Ballou, periodical romance, and the editor function -- Nation and regionalism in Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper -- Coda: Hyperbolic regionalism, confederate nationalism, and the new Southern frontier