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Poetry of the 1850’s which focused on the American Revolution is filled with grandiose, idealized visions. In the decade before the Civil War, some poets looked to the revolution as the central point in America’s history, when Americans essentially came into their own as a people and as a unified country. The three poets included in this collection are relatively obscure, but the similarities between their portrayals of the American Revolution suggest that most Americans living in this period shared their views. George Washington appears in these poems as the defining symbol of America’s history. In some of their lines, Washington seems virtually godlike in his power, virtue, and holiness. America was scarcely seventy-five years old when these poets wrote the works selected here, and in their works we can see their efforts to firmly establish the revolution as America’s primary symbolic source of national character.