In this chapter, I examine the extant literature on nationalism and seek to locate the American case within it. Even as the march of progress for traditionally marginalized communities has slowly and fitfully expanded the American panoply, debates over who exactly gets to belong have raged in politics, in social life, and in the scholarship. This is, of course, only one part of the story this book aims to investigate. It was the nascent, less-than-a-century-old American nation that was torn apart during the Civil War, a war which would contest not only what the inheritances of the American experiment meant, but to whom they belonged. For four years, two distinct nations fought an extremely costly war over the future of human enslavement on this continent. The Confederate nation fought for their vision of a slaveholding, agrarian, patriarchal, and fundamentally white supremacist future. The Union was in no way an egalitarian utopia, but Lincoln as commander-in-chief did eventually recognize the utility of emancipation toward winning the war and maintaining one country, not two. In order to fully engage with both American and Confederate nationalism, this chapter examines each along the lines of three exclusionary orthodoxies: racism, sexism, and religious discrimination.