ABSTRACT
The one-dollar bill reflects the development of North American approaches to the past. First issued in 1862, its focus has been both the founding constitution and the vicissitudes of the nation. This chapter moves the great American story away from the narrow confines of constitution, economic interests and American exceptionalism in order to take into account narratives connected to the experiences of black people, the oppressed and the poor, and encounters with those who were not American. Many of Vico’s ideas tend towards a historical methodology which revealed and reconstructed the mentalities of past peoples. In Louis Hartz’s The Liberal Tradition in America individualism and the defence of property rights provided the ‘single factor analysis’ that unlocked a master narrative that explained American history. Many of the disputatious questions around the history of American slavery operate in the realm of ideas.
