Part 1. Remembering the past: European and colonial traditions; "Domestic history" and the Republican novel
Part 2. Historiography and the "art of the historian": Historical representation in the Monthly magazine and American review and the Literary magazine and American register; The historical sketches-and "a government, ecclesiastical and civil"; Empire and the "annals of Europe"
Part 3. The politics of history: American exceptionalism and the "annals of America"; constitutional limits-and "liberalism".