ABSTRACT
In the last couple of decades, a number of historians have written histories that explore the ways that discourses of gender have shaped American engagement in conflict. "Manhood" and "manliness" are key terms in the history of discourses about individual and national identity, social order, and the legitimacy of political leadership. And of course, it is important to remember that for the purposes of historical analysis, gender is discursively constructed. This chapter discusses several episodes in American history where scholars have used gender analytically to advance our understanding of the discursive origins of war. Gendered ideologies of male power and honor were at the same time inextricable from racialized ideologies of white supremacy and a "Christian civilization" based on enslaved African-American labor. The martial imperialism of the era of Manifest Destiny was discursively constructed as a sexualized and racialized vision of manly domination, advertised widely in efforts to recruit and equip the expeditions.
