The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery
Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 4/6/2009
EAN 9780521884358, ISBN10: 0521884357
Hardcover, 312 pages, 22.9 x 15.5 x 2.5 cm
Language: English
In the 1790s, American conservatives were profoundly shaken when their French 'sister republic' collapsed into violent factionalism and civil war. Fearful that civic bloodshed and chaos might overwhelm their own new republic, northern Federalists and their Congregationalist allies reacted with a war of words directed at the French Revolution and at the Americans who supported it. The Reign of Terror in America traces the paths by which American fears of the French Revolution's violence gave rise, over the course of two generations, to antislavery, antiwar, and public-education movements in the United States. This book shows how the violence in France permeated political thought in the United States. Ultimately, the bloodshed in France inspired northeastern conservatives to oppose the violence of slaveholding, provided material for their attacks on Southern slavery, and helped to spark the Civil War.
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.