In Chapter 2, we rely on interviews with 29 communications directors in the U.S. House of Representatives to better understand the strategic considerations that influence their rhetorical outreach. Here we ask when and how do legislators, offices engage in proactive and reactive forms of rhetorical outreach? What shapes these decisions? And how does this vary by the race of the member of Congress? We demonstrate that proactive rhetorical outreach is a key component of most legislator offices’ communications strategies. In an effort to build favorable brands for their member, which is not only important in their efforts to appeal to their constituents but also to accrue influence in Congress, communications directors regularly engage in proactive rhetorical outreach. However, what they focus on in that outreach varies by office based on a host of variables, including legislator identity and constituency demographics. In that vein, we show that Black legislators regularly engage in proactive racial rhetorical representation and that their racial identity, along with the large presence of minority constituents in their district, help explain why. In contrast, though non-Black legislators engage in proactive rhetorical outreach, they tend to be more reactive in their racial rhetorical outreach.

In the conclusion, we speak about the growing significance of racial rhetorical representation in demonstrating that elected officials are working on behalf of their constituents in an era of increasing political gridlock. We also connect our findings to the continued importance of Black representation in a period where the salience of race and racial inequality has grown. Not only do we find that Black legislators provide Black people with the most rhetorical representation on race, we also find that they are more proactive, speaking out on issues that are not widely known and pursuing interests that are not yet part of the national agenda. Black elected officials continue to play a crucial role in advocating for Black interests, and they appear necessary for the full and equal representation of Black people. We then discuss why this advocacy is particularly important in a period where debates over crucial policies face political reckonings. For example, the advocacy behind the 1965 Voting Rights Act which has been challenged in court and expires in 2032 will likely shape Black politics into the future. We also address whether racial rhetoric will continue to be enough to voters of underrepresented groups who yearn for federal legislation to address critical societal disparities. We conclude the chapter by discussing how the Democratic Party notably has liberalized with regards to race since the 1990s and we contend that the racial advocacy by Black members of Congress is behind this liberalization.

In Chapter 3, we explore who provides Black centered racial rhetorical representation. This chapter allows us to first examine whether a link between descriptive and rhetorical representation, which has been absent in previous research on this topic (See Price 2016, Gillion 2016, Haines et al. 2019), has strengthened in recent years. In addition to this exploration, this chapter makes two important contributions to our understanding of race and rhetorical representation. First, we move beyond the Black-White paradigm and explore the rhetoric of Latino/a and Asian American elected officials. Second, rather than treating each racial/ethnic group as a monolith, we explore how the intersections of gender, class, educational attainment, and age within racial groups may shape levels of rhetorical representation. For example, do African Americans who attended a Historically Black College or University provide more rhetorical representation to co-racial individuals? Are White women more likely to engage in rhetorical representation than White men? By moving beyond the dichotomy of race (Junn and Brown 2012), we can explore the nuanced ways that individuals with various intersecting identities may provide different levels of rhetorical representation.

In Chapter 8, we use an experiment which presents a large sample of Black and White respondents with a press release from a hypothetical politician. The press release differs by whether it discusses a non-racial liberal issue (climate change), a high-profile racial issue (police reform), and a low-profile racial issue (manufacturing employment discrimination). We also vary the race of the hypothetical politician. The results demonstrate that racial rhetorical representation improves perceptions of both Black and White politicians among African Americans. However, White elected officials benefit most from speaking about lower profile racial issues. This demonstrates that the form of racial outreach that White elected officials are the least likely to engage in may help them the most with Black people. Qualitative responses reveal that Black respondents perceive more policy congruence, empathy, and trust in Black elected officials when they engage in both forms of racial rhetorical representation. However, Black respondents are much more trusting of White politicians to follow through their rhetoric with action when it is tied to a low-profile racial issue.

The Debate on the American Revolution set out unashamedly to examine the American side of the story. It was a choice consciously made and reflected the limitations imposed on a book of this size by so large a topic and herein lies the irony, for at the end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first, a 'new' British history has taken shape, one reconceptualised within an Atlantic world, and latterly an imperial one. Yet the history of the American Revolution has taken a curious turn. When John Adams raised the question of who would write the history of the American Revolution, he was concerned about his own reputation and fearful that Franklin and Jefferson would run away with the glory. The problem that confronts the modern historian of the Revolution is how to incorporate the vast array of actors who participated in it into a single narrative.

Challenges to the preoccupation of historians with republicanism as the prevailing ideology of the Revolution were relatively slow to appear. The relationship between slavery and representation was far too complex to be 'understood in a simple North–South frame of reference'. While not rejecting it outright, Paul Finkelman believed that it was weakened by the lack of debate in Congress about the prohibition of slavery in the 1787 Northwest Ordinance and the absence of comments in members' correspondence. Original Meanings addressed 'the politics of constitution making and the major problems of constitutional theory and institutional design that Americans had to consider when they replaced the Articles of Confederation with a true national government'; and sought to 'evaluate how much authority original meaning" or "original intention" or "understanding" should enjoy in its ongoing interpretation.'"

Any attempt to review the historiography of the American Revolution over more than two centuries is by any estimate presumptuous, foolhardy and overly ambitious, especially when undertaken by a Welsh-born, English and American trained historian who has the privilege of teaching early American history in what was once termed 'one of the dark corners of the land'. The author examines the historiography of the Revolution's causes and meaning, dividing them roughly into the period before and after professionalization. He explores the consequences of the Revolution as they related to the creation of the Federal Constitution, dividing these chapters into a consideration of those writing before the end of the Second World War and those writing in the post-war period taking the subject up to and including the debate over 'original intent'.

The first historians of the American Revolution spoke to different audiences on each side of the Atlantic but Gordon attempted to speak to both. The value of Ramsay's History of the American Revolution lay not in its information, but 'the ways in which he reveals the sensibility through which the events of his era were filtered'. The History of the American Revolution was not Ramsay's first attempt to write a history of his time. It was the passage of the Stamp Act and the 'insignificant duty' on tea that precipitated though did not cause the American Revolution. The origins of that 'great event' were to be found in 'powerful and efficient causes' deep in America's past. The united sentiments of two to three million people spread over a continent in opposition to the Stamp Act 'were not the work of a day or a year'.

Within a framework which tied acceptance of the Federal Constitution to the growth and prosperity of the United States, a commonplace of early histories of the young republic, Curtis constructed an argument based on counterfactual propositions in which enslaved 'Africans', though denied the equal rights of man, became the means of extending rights to others. In two very influential books, The Articles of Confederation and The New Nation Jensen anchored the period between the Declaration of Independence and the making of the Federal Constitution firmly in the progressive tradition. The Articles of Confederation, wrote Jensen, could only be understood 'in relation to the internal revolution in the American states: the individual and group interests, the social cleavages, and the interstate conflicts that existed at the outbreak of the Revolution'.

In the work of nineteenth-century historians women sank further into obscurity, with the singular exception of the writings of Elizabeth Ellet (1818–1877). Bancroft and Hildreth contented themselves with retelling the stories of the deaths of Jane McCrea and Hannah Caldwell. Modern women's history has its roots in the new social history and upheavals of the 1960s when old barriers came down, fresh vistas opened up, and the affinity of the social sciences with history was recognized. The rate of female literacy remained stagnant while that of men forged ahead. John Shy, one of the first of the new military historians, considered that the Americans were disadvantaged by the fact that they had fewer female support staff than the British, but Washington thought there were too many and that they put a strain on scarce resources.

If the vantage point of the imperialists was Whitehall and Westminster rather than the Atlantic seaboard, the inspiration of progressive historians was Paris and the French Revolution. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, the original progressives, Beard, Becker, Hacker and Jameson constituted one element of a broad reform movement during the Progressive Era in the years before the First World War. Closely concerned with the Revolution than the imperialists, the progressives sought the origins of the Revolution in internal conflict. They saw the Revolution as a social movement, broadly democratic, and viewed the Federal Constitution as a conservative reaction against it. Progressive historians introduced into American history the language of class and section but not of 'race'. This chapter examines their approach to the Revolution. Instead of creating a new order of benevolence and selflessness, enlightened republicanism was breeding social competitiveness and individualism.