Crisis and legitimacy in Atlantic American narratives of piracy : 1678 1865 This Open Access book Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy: 1678 1865 examines literary and visual representations of piracy beginning with A.O. Exquemelin’s 1678 Buccaneers of America and ending at the onset of the US American Civil War. Examining both canonical and understudied texts—from Puritan sermons James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover and Herman Melville’s “Benito Cereno” to the popular cross dressing female pirate novelette Fanny Campbell and satirical decorated Union envelopes this book argues that piracy acted as a trope to negotiate ideas of legitimacy in the contexts of U.S. colonialism nationalism and expansionism. The readings demonstrate how pirates were invoked in transatlantic literary production at times when dominant conceptions of legitimacy built upon categorizations of race class and gender had come into crisis. As popular and mobile maritime outlaw figures it is suggested pirates asked questions about might and right at critical moments of Atlantic history. 1. Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis and Legitimacy 2. Pirate Narratives and the Colonial Atlantic 3. Pirate Narratives and the Revolutionary Atlantic in the Early Republic and the Antebellum Period 4. Cultural Constructions of Piracy during the Crisis over Slavery 5. Coda.