Flowers, Guns, and Money: Joel Roberts Poinsett and the Paradoxes of American Patriotism

Historian Regele (Manufacturing Advantage) profiles antebellum U.S. statesman Joel Roberts Poinsett (1779–1851) in this insightful and accessible biography. Best remembered for giving his name to the poinsettia, a traditional Mexican Christmas flower, Poinsett personified “the contradictions and inconsistencies at the heart of the American experiment,” according to Regele. She traces how, as a slaveholder and world traveler, Poinsett wed his self-interest with that of the nation’s, and explores in detail Poinsett’s interventions in Latin America—in both official and unofficial capacities—and his rise to power as President Martin Van Buren’s secretary of war. From the outset of his career, Poinsett’s “defiance of categorization” (for example, he owned slaves yet opposed states’ rights) paired with his innate “reverence for order” propelled him into America’s “small army of capitalist consuls” seeking to promote U.S. commerce via “dubious military force.” On the home front, he oversaw the forced deportation of Native Americans, culminating in the infamous Trail of Tears, and endowed the Smithsonian Institute, a museum that Regele contends Poinsett envisioned as a “display of imperialism.” Astutely blending scholarship on antebellum economics, politics, and foreign policy, Regele shows how Poinsett’s conception of “patriotism” functioned to promote “whiteness, Anglo-American culture, and militarism.” The result is an enlightening window onto America’s imperialistic ambitions in the 19th century. (Nov.)