Contents

Acknowledgements VII

Introduction 1

Chapter 1
Mapping American Conspiracism 32
Source I: The Epistemology of Causality 37
Source II: The Ideology of Republicanism 44
Source III: The Heritage of Puritanism 49
Excursion: Conspiracy Theory, Religion, Secularization 54
A Historical Typology of American Conspiracy Theories 56

Chapter 2
Salem, or: The Metaphysical Puritan Conspiracy Theory 68
Living in the “Devil’s Territories”: The Stabilizing Conspiracy Theory 72
“The Devil Hath Been Raised Among Us”: The Destabilizing Variant 77
“Church-members […] You & I May Be, & Yet Devils for All That”:
The Sermons of Samuel Parris 88
“To Countermine the whole PLOT of the Devil”: Cotton Mather’s
The Wonders of the Invisible World 96
“A Distrustful […] Man, Did He Become”: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s
“Young Goodman Brown” 105

Chapter 3
Subversion through Education: The Catholic Conspiracy Theory 113
From Anti-Masonry to Anti-Catholicism 118
The Invasion Detected: Lyman Beecher’s and Samuel Morse’s Visions of
Conspiracy 124
Dramatizing the Threat to the Republic’s Future Mothers: The Convent
Captivity Narrative 137
Ambivalent Anti-Catholicism: George Lippard’s The Monks of
Monk Hall 154
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Chapter 4
Abolitionists, “Black Republicans,” and the Slave Power:
Antebellum Conspiracy Theories 167
The Abolitionist Conspiracy Theory 174
The Slave Power Conspiracy Theory 187
A Partisan Leader and a Few Rebellious Slaves: Literary Engagements
with Conspiracy Theories about Slavery 201
The Meaning of the Knot: Conspiracy Theories in Herman Melville’s
“Benito Cereno” 209

Chapter 5
“Masters of Deceit”: Conspiracy Theory in the Great Red Scare
of the 1950s 223
Something Old and Something New: The Communist Conspiracy
Theory 232
“Damaged Souls”: Communism and Other Deviancies 243
Preachers in a Moral Struggle: J. Edgar Hoover and Joseph McCarthy 248
McCarthy’s Mommies: The Manchurian Candidate 264

Conclusion: To the Margins (and Back Again?) 283

Works Cited 302