Beutler’s Washington’s Hair opens with a provocative question: “Did early Americans have beliefs about the nature of memory itself that, by giving shape to their efforts to remember their nation’s birth, affected foundational patriotic American memory and identity? (ix).” Beutler answers a resounding “yes” in five brisk chapters that chart how ideas about memory—especially a turn toward materialist and physical forms of memory—shaped Americans’ notions of patriotism. Beutler convincingly argues that an array of scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas about the very nature of memory shaped how Americans used physical objects to open up possibilities for more “democratic” participation in the Revolutionary commemorations that were so important to national political and cultural life.
Beutler maintains that “in the period between 1790 and 1840 … Americans increasingly embraced reductive materialist views of memory,” influenced by “such ideas as physiognomy, brain localization, and their popular combination as phrenology.” Each chapter of his...