This chapter highlights the importance of newspapers as essential publishing venues for American essayists during the 1880–1920 period. During this time, newspaper columns or editorials were some of the most powerful manifestations of the American essay. A new kind of personal essay emerged, revealing tensions between various categories: the genteel and the modern, progressivism and prejudice, subjectivity and objectivity. While essayistic objectivity aspired to provide verifiable evidence and to be “truthful” in its interpretations of the world, essayistic subjectivity attempted to engage the reader by means of the essayist’s own perceptions and experiences. Significantly, during this period, the essay sought new vessels for authorial subjectivity, be it in the form of fiction or nonfiction, expanding the possibilities of the personal essay. Important essayists, columnists, and editorialists of the period included H. L. Mencken, Anna Julia Cooper, Robert Benchley, Ida B. Wells, and Heywood Broun. For many of these writers, the political and personal are inseparable, and the essay often functions as a form of authorial mediation, of narrative outrage, and a call to social action.

What are the legacies of American Puritanism? The answers might surprise you. Somewhat paradoxically, these legacies are somehow both nearly invisible in the contemporary United States and also ubiquitous. On one hand, there is very little evidence of the theology or polity of seventeenth-century New England Puritans visible in today’s religious or political culture. It would be difficult to find an extant church offering a semblance of the services the Puritans attended, and even churches that claim a link to this time are quick to emphasize their evolution. At the same time, “puritan” persists in our culture as a byword for everything that is more repressive and less sexually evolved than we are. For instance, activists who want more freedom for nudity and sexual expression on social media often blame puritans for these restrictions. This differentiation between a contemporary Us and a puritan Them creates space for caricature that opens up space for what I call “settler kitsch,” an array of cartoonish, caricatured images of the settlers of New England, impossible to take seriously with their big hats and funny shoes. At the same time, these cartoons obscure an actual cognizance of Puritans by concealing the violence inherent in the settler colonial projects of Pilgrims and Puritans. As such, the principal legacies of Puritanism today are #freethenipple and settler kitsch.

Chapter 1 introduces the concept of the censor’s dilemma: the notion that censors in America may wield significant power for a limited time, but ultimately are undone by the principles of free expression embodied in the First Amendment. Because of this, reformers seek to avoid the label of “censor,” even when their goal is to suppress speech. The urge to censor comes from both the political left and the right, yet both sides claim that only their antagonists engage in censorship. Paradoxically, censors exude sanctimony and a sense of certainty, but cannot shake off the taint of illegitimacy in societies devoted to freedom of expression.

Chapter 3 examines Anthony Comstock’s legacy and the birth of the “censor’s dilemma.” Although no censor before or since has wielded such power or had the same level of influence as Comstock, his achievements were washed away by cultural and legal evolution. Even in his time, his crusades did as much to promote the popularity of “forbidden” works, and since his time, the profession of censor has been forever tarnished. The legal doctrine on which Comstock depended was reversed by the development of First Amendment law through the twentieth century, particularly the law of obscenity. To the extent that Comstock is remembered today, he is the subject of derision and scorn.

Chapter 4 sets forth the “Comstock Playbook,” the techniques used by the anti-vice crusader to attack his adversaries, which have been emulated by censors ever since. His strategies include exhibiting moral certainty, equating opposition to your cause with the love of vice, denouncing and discrediting adversaries, promoting xenophobia, poisoning the debate with invective, touting pseudo science, seeking publicity, exaggeratingthe threat to be overcome, hyping all accomplishments, and playing the martyr.

This chapter focusses on Avis rescuing the faltering dictionary project after Lovell's unexpected death in 1960, after only two years at the helm of the project. It explores the intellectual background of Avis at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, where he met his future wife Faith Hutchison, who was one of the most educated women in all of Canada at the time. It traces Avis' academic socialization to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was trained and surrounded by the best linguists and dialectologists of their day. Avis, just like Lovell, died relatively young of a heart attack, and there are a number of further parallels and differences between the two men that are highlighted. Parallels between Avis and Lovell on the one hand and Noah Webster and Henry L. Mencken, the American spokespeople for linguistic autonomy, round off the chapter.