The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery

ISBN-13: 9780521884358 / Angielski / Twarda / 2009 / 296 str.

Rachel Hope Cleves

Opis

When the French Revolution degenerated into violent factionalism and civil war during the early 1790s, American conservative northeasterners reacted in profound terror. Alarmed by the possibility that the United States would follow her sister republic into chaos and civic bloodshed, northern Federalists and their Congregationalist allies reacted by aggressively attacking the violence of the French Revolution and its supposed American votaries. The Reign of Terror in America argues that American fears of the violence of the French Revolution led to antislavery, antiwar, and public education movements in the nineteenth-century United States. It is the first history of how Americans perceived the Reign of Terror, and reveals how significantly fears of French Violence changed the United States. Ultimately, these fears inspired a stark opposition to the violence of slaveholding, provided material for dramatic attacks on southern slavery, and helped to spark the Civil War."

Recenzje

Review of the hardback: 'The Reign of Terror in America is a persuasive account of how revulsion to French revolutionary excesses laid the deep foundations of the antebellum antislavery movement. Anti-Jacobinism offered a powerful indictment of democracy run violently amok that inspired reformers to redeem democracy's promise - ultimately by violent means. Rachel Hope Cleves gives us a fresh and provocative perspective on a complicated, crucially important chapter of our national history.' Peter S. Onuf, University of Virginia

Spis treści

Introduction: revolutionary violence in the Atlantic world; 1. Violence and social order in the early American republic; 2. A scene of confusion and blood: the American reaction against the French Revolution; 3. Mortal eloquence: from anti-Jacobinism to antislavery; 4. Fighting the war of 1812; 5. Disciplining the 'Wild Beast': violence and education; 6. Growing up anti-Jacobin: the Federalist-Abolitionist connection reconsidered; Conclusion: the problem of violence in the Early Republic; Appendix. Digital database citations: American narratives of the French Revolution.