The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present

First published by Cornell in 1971, The Fear of Conspiracy brings together eighty-five speeches, documents, and writings―the authors of which range from George Washington to Stokely Carmichael―that illustrate the role played in American history by the fear of conspiracy and subversion. This book, documenting two centuries of conspiracy-mongering (1763-1966), highlights the American tendency to search for subversive enemies and to construct terrifying dangers from fragmentary and highly circumstantial evidence.

David Brion Davis is Sterling Professor of History Emeritus and Director Emeritus of the Gilder Lehrman Center at Yale University. He is the winner of several national awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, and the author several books including Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World, winner of the 2007 Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award.