Abstract This essay examines the role of the USS Nautilus (SSN 571), the world's first atomic powered submarine, as an agency for advancing the Cold War objectives of the Eisenhower White House in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's successful launches of Sputniks 1 and 2 and the early failures of the U.S. Vanguard program in late 1957 and early 1958. Specifically, it examines the campaign to exploit Nautilus for domestic propaganda purposes, which culminated in “Operation Sunshine,” the first submerged transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic oceans via the North Pole. The essay argues that architects of the technological spectacle faced the necessity of reconciling the material and symbolic aspects of the mission, and identifies three areas where this may have been necessary. In addition to illuminating the role of the Eisenhower White House in a significant, but largely forgotten episode in the Cold War, the essay illustrates the interplay of material and symbolic elements in Operation Sunshine and identifies some constraints that may be inherent in such technological spectacles.

Abstract This essay examines the speech delivered by Vice President John C. Breckinridge on the occasion of the removal of the United States Senate to its new chambers on January 4, 1859. Drawing upon Kenneth Burkes concept of contextual substance, I argue that Breckinridge constructs the Senate’s transition to its new quarters as a defense of constitutional unionism, a conservative political ideology holding that the survival and prosperity of the Union depended upon its continued adherence to the compromises enshrined in the Republics founding document. In an age dominated by increasingly strident rhetorical extremes, constitutional unionism represented a beleaguered vision of Union that was soon eclipsed by the Civil War and today is all but forgotten. Analysis of the Removal Address thus illumines the rhetoric of an important yet neglected political ideology while disclosing the rhetorical "alchemy" by which geometric, familial, and directional substance reconcile continuity and change in leave-taking discourse.