ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connections of American landscape and national identity in published travel correspondence of the postwar press, specifically the years 1865 through 1870. It examines the themes of America and Americanness that emerged in postwar travel correspondence, and suggests that the corpus of travel writing presented an idealized vision of the nation that set the stage for expanding Western settlement, economic development, and tourism in the Gilded Age. In the postwar period, landscape was among the most compelling symbols of nationhood. Correspondents depicting stage drivers upheld them as heroes who were able to dominate the unfamiliar and perilous landscapes of the West. Travel correspondence familiarized the landscape for contemporary readers through a textual inscription of their presence in the West and with rhetorical connections to the East and Europe.
