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

In this book, Cleves argues that American fears of the violence of the French Revolution led to antislavery, antiwar, and public education movements.

Rachel Hope Cleves (Author)

9780521884358, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 6 April 2009

312 pages
23.4 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.54 kg

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

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.

Subject Areas: American Civil War [HBWJ], Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]