Distant Revolutions

Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to AmericanExceptionalism is a study of American politics, culture, and foreign relations in themid-nineteenth century, illuminated through the reactions of Americans to the Europeanrevolutions of 1848. Flush from the recent American military victory over Mexico, many Americanscelebrated news of democratic revolutions breaking out across Europe as a further sign of divineprovidence. Others thought that the 1848 revolutions served only to highlight how America'sown revolution had not done enough in the way of reform. Still other Americans renounced the 1848revolutions and the thought of trans-atlantic unity because they interpreted Europeanrevolutionary radicalism and its portents of violence, socialism, and atheism as dangerous to theunique virtues of the United States.When the 1848 revolutions failed to create stabledemocratic governments in Europe, many Americans declared that their own revolutionary tradition wassuperior, American reform would be gradual and peaceful. Thus, when violence erupted over thequestion of territorial slavery in the 1850s, the effect was magnified among antislavery Americans,who reinterpreted the menace of slavery in light of the revolutions and counter-revolutions ofEurope. For them a new revolution in America could indeed be necessary, to stop the onset ofauthoritarian conditions and to cure American exemplarism. The Civil War, then, when it came, wasAmerica's answer to the 1848 revolutions, a testimony to America's democraticshortcomings, and an American version of a violent, nation-building revolution.