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In wartime, administration supporters' assumption that partisan opposition was disloyal and therefore illegitimate made it acceptable to use the instruments of the state—especially the moral and physical power of the newly created mass citizen army—to aid the victory of loyal candidates. Loyalty Oaths in the border slave states, and the more informal loyalty tests imposed by the presence of soldiers and provost marshals at the polls in some parts of the North, gave a hard edge to the rhetorical conflation of party and nation. While direct military intervention in election results remained very much the exception rather than the rule, the assumption that justified it—that elections were only legitimate so long as the right side won—was widespread.

This chapter explores three cases—Tahiti, the Loyalty Islands, and Madagascar—in order to illustrate how Protestants from the Société des Missions Évangéliques de Paris (or Paris Mission) negotiated working in colonies alongside French Catholics. In each situation, the Paris Mission defended a missionary internationalism against a colonial nationalism, which both the French state and Catholic missionaries sought to impose by associating Protestantism with allegiance to the British Empire. The Paris Mission viewed this association of politics and religion as a trap meant to subordinate apostolic work to a political project.

This chapter summarises the key arguments of the book and concludes by underlining that nationalist narratives can be deconstructed, fragmented and reconstructed in new forms without necessarily losing their symbolic power. Whilst the language of the war no longer guarantees loyalty to the political system which has sought to capitalise on it for the past fifty years, it still links citizens to each other. This might seem an unconvincing claim in a society dominated demographically, if not politically, by younger generations who are often described as uninterested in the war and disillusioned with politics. But the real test of the power of a dominant societal discourse is when individuals reproduce it even when it contradicts with their lived experiences, even when they profess that they do not believe in it, or even when they think that they do not know about it.

This conclusion to the book emphasizes that Royce's philosophy of loyalty does not necessitate becoming a moral hero, but simply necessitates that we be loyal, and insofar as it lies in our power, be loyal to loyalty. It is urged that our lives have sense and meaning if we are loyal, and our lives are genuinely moral if and only if our loyalty is loyal to loyalty. Such loyal living is what recognizes and strives to fulfil the universal need to be helped, devoting our loyal service according to our unique capacities, aptitudes, relationships, interests, and talents. In our quest to live loyally, we will undoubtedly endure times of defeat, but if loyalty is what makes life meaningful, then a defeat of one's loyalty must never be taken as final.

This chapter explores the relationship between security, identity and loyalty. Focusing on the formative texts and practices underpinning the rise of the national security state in America, while alluding to more recent developments, the chapter argues that the fabrication of national security goes hand in hand with the fabrication of national identity, and vice versa. Extending well beyond the question of patriotism as a security trope, this ‘identity’ permeates everyday life, and helps construct political loyalty – not just to the state, but to security per se. Loyalty is treated as a key political technology for simultaneously gauging identity and reaffirming security, thereby revealing the security-identity-loyalty complex.

This chapter examines how Confederate and Union forces tried to enforce loyalty among Mississippians by judging them according to the standard of protective nationalism. Both sides used the Oath of Allegiance and took advantage of situations such as property disputes and alleged war profiteering to gauge citizens’ alleged national loyalties. Although Mississippians had largely embraced a protective nationalist fervor during the buildup to secession and throughout the first year of the war, such enthusiasm came easy when the conflict’s hardships had yet to come to their doorsteps. As the second year of the war arrived, however, military events tested Mississippians’ ability to devote themselves entirely to the Rebel cause. Their multiple allegiances made loyalty enforcement problematic for two warring governments seeking to put citizens into dichotomized “loyal” and “disloyal” camps. The ideals of protective nationalism proved elusive when faced with the harsh reality of its practical implication on the ground.

Differing notions of loyalty among slaves and slaveholders from 1860-1865 are the subject of Chapter 5. This chapter highlights how the internal war between Mississippi slaves and slaveholders, which had simmered during the antebellum era, exploded during the Civil War. Slaveholders insisted that their slaves only express an unconditional servile loyalty to their masters, the basis of the master-slave relationship. Slaves, however, rejected this forced servility and embraced multiple conceptions of freedom by acting on loyalties that they had forged while in bondage. These loyalties, in turn, enabled them to envision the lived experience of freedom during and after the war. Although black Mississippians shared a collective desire to escape from the forced servility of white mastery, once emancipated they embraced different views that associated freedom with land ownership, property rights, wage labor, and military service.

With a close examination of Royce's treatment of the concept, as well as an etymological and historical study of the term, this chapter clarifies what, precisely, loyalty is. “Loyalty” is thus distinguished from “devotion,” “faithfulness,” “fidelity,” and other related terms. Attention is paid to the “chance and misleading associations” of the term which Royce wishes to avoid, most notably those connecting loyalty with war. Moreover, the chapter establishes what is essential to the term, in Royce's estimation, as he develops and deploys the concept in The Philosophy of Loyalty. While Royce's definition of loyalty is often quoted as “the willing and practical and thoroughgoing devotion of a person to a cause,” it is noted that Royce stipulates that this is a preliminary definition. Each of the terms of this preliminary definition is analyzed, as well as its relationship to Royce's completed definition, “the Will to Believe in something eternal, and to express that belief in the practical life of a human being.”

This chapter approaches the topic of loyalty in Shakespeare’s plays primarily through the lens of Antonio’s devotion to Bassanio in The Merchant of Venice and Celia’s to Rosalind in As You Like It. It argues that although these pairs of friends are differently gendered, they are structurally very similar, and marked by their total imbalance. Both Antonio and Celia demonstrate exceptional selflessness in their loyalty, despite the fact that neither Bassanio nor Rosalind come close to ever repaying their kindness. The chapter suggests that our difficulty in processing these disproportionate relationships is because they upset the moral foundation of fairness, but loyalty is not transactional. It seems, rather, that Shakespeare’s notion of friendship rested partly on the Christian (Thomist) virtue of charity. It also argues that when Shakespeare deals with loyalty, he focuses on individual relationships, as opposed to groups. In the language of modern psychological and sociological studies, this renders his friendships, and by extension his concept of loyalty, “feminine” even though the friendships he depicts are between both men and women.

This chapter examines the development of Royce's ethico-religious insight in many of his writings, ranging from his 1896 essay “ The Problem of Job” to The Philosophy of Loyalty. The chapter claims that in “ The Problem of Job”, Royce lays the foundation for all of his subsequent philosophy, because it is the first essay in which his ethico-religious insight ceases to be in the background and illuminates his entire philosophy, breathing new life into his absolute idealism.

This chapter examines several specific policies enacted by the George W. Bush administration, including abstinence-only sex education, antiprostitution pledges, and the Prostitution Loyalty Oath in the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2003, that incorporated a conservative Protestant sexual morality into the United States' anti-trafficking project. Beyond the conceptual conflation of human trafficking and sex trafficking, these policies further conflated sex trafficking with bad or immoral sex more generally.

This introductory chapter examines the current scholarship on leaving or walking away from political groups such as nation states, political parties, and civic associations. It argues that “exit” tends to have three characteristics in this literature. It is associated with individualism, anti-participation, and freedom from higher authority. In short, exit is often thought of as an act that cuts someone off from politics or frees a person from the burden on politics. The chapter suggests that there is another way to think about exit as remaining connected to politics and attached to political communities. Using James Baldwin’s self-exile from the United States as an example, it offers an initial glimpse of what this alternative way of leaving looks like and provides an overview of the chapters of the book.

Melinda Lawson explores the meaning of national loyalty through the writings of abolitionist leader Wendell Phillips, anti-slavery Congressman George Julian, and President Abraham Lincoln. The author stresses that elite men were moved by notionsof “duty,” compelling them to uphold moral principles in their civic roles. Lawson’s work suggests the challenges men of antislavery conviction faced in a slaveholding republic where the Constitution nurtured the “peculiar institution.” Theirs was not a national loyalty of blind allegiance to the Constitution and the laws. Instead, each of the three held as sacred the ideals of liberty and equality written in the Declaration of Independence. This chapter traces how each man navigated the complicated duties of a true patriot through disunion and war.

Jonathan W. White’s essay studies compensation debates in the Pennsylvania State Legislature to illuminate partisan conceptions of treason and loyalty. Pennsylvanians along the southern border were victimized by multiple Confederate invasions. The widespread damage to property, including thousands made homeless in the 1864 burning of Chambersburg, sparked heated debates in the statehouse over compensation for losses. At issue was the perceived loyalty of the purported victims. In an overwhelmingly Democratic region, many were assumed to give aidand encouragement to the enemy because of their political affiliation. White’s essay examines how Republican legislators attempted to impose loyalty oaths and tests of “proof” to prevent those deemed unworthy and “disloyal” from receiving aid. In the process, White’s narrative sheds light on how Republicans developed and employed a rhetoric of “loyalty” to denigrate their political opponents and foster support for Republican war measures.

Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai explores perceptions of national loyalty held by college-educated northern men during the war. His work draws on the writings of a group of New England graduates, whom he labels the New Brahmins. He highlights how their sense of moral duty as educated elites, along with their commitment to the Union, compelled them to enlist into the army. Focusing on McClellan’s leadership, the controversy of emancipation, and the election of 1864, Wongsrichanalai shows how these men viewed military and political issues through nonpartisan lenses. Holding military success and union victory as the priority, these soldiers were quite critical of partisan devotionand unquestioned support of the government. According to the author, the New Brahmins reflect an understudied northern honor or nationalism, in which elite young officers pursued the greater good of society without fear of individual consequences.

Judith Giesberg explores the intersection of national loyalty debates and the labor activism of Philadelphia seamstresses in war industries. Women workers understood the vital service they performed sewing military uniforms and equipment but were largely exploited and vulnerable in a system of federal contracting reliant on middle-men and “outwork.” Giesberg argues that the exploitation of women workers, and the denigration of their labor activism, rested on an idealized depiction of female patriotism in supporting roles, as soldiers’ wives and family. Working class women turned the rhetorical tables by laying claim to their own service and patriotism, legitimizing their protests in a republican language of rights and tyranny. In examining seamstresses’ protests at the Schuylkill Arsenal, Giesberg uncovers a forgotten chapter in American labor history, connecting antebellum activism with Gilded Age strife. The author depicts a brief window of opportunity where women challenged the formative stage of the sweatshop system drawing in part on professions of their own loyalty.