MARY PEABODY MANN'S "JUANITA": CUBA AND US NATIONAL IDENTITY

[...]while one is tempted to wonder whether the novel is an antebellum or a postbellum text, that question must be answered not according to an either/ or but, rather, a both/and approach: the novel is antebellum in sensibility, but it is repackaged to present that sensibility to postbellum concerns. Critics of imperialism presented this project as contradictory: how could a nation with origins in anti-colonial revolution, one whose national ethos valorized political self-determination, become an imperial power? (See, e.g., Sumner.) This seeming contradiction was particularly apparent in the case of projects to annex Cuba, where by the beginning of the Spanish-American War, revolutionaries had long been fighting for their liberty; as such, Cuba could be supposed to be precisely the type of nation whose prerogatives the United States ought to respect.