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

Abstract

The Reign of Terror in America: Visions of Violence from Anti-Jacobinism to Antislavery. By Rachel Hope Cleves. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Pp. 296. Cloth $82.00.)Reviewed by Todd EstesSeveral years ago, Rachel Hope Cleves wrote eloquently in these pages about how violence had affected her life personally and shaped her as a scholar intellectually (On Writing History of Violence, JER 24 [Winter 2004]). In some ways, this book is a fuller, more developed rumination on those same themes. But it is also much more: a provocative, resonant first book about significant topics both timely and timeless.While scholars have long noted impact of French Revolution on U.S. politics in 1790s, Cleves argues that, from first decade of new government through end of Civil War, a French Revolutionary discourse dominated American politics and religion and was reflected in newspapers, letters, periodicals, poetry, fiction, drama, and pedagogical materials. Propounded mainly by New England Federalists and Calviniste, this strain produced numerous denunciations of Jacobinism (2), an imprecise, catch-all term of opprobrium that provided basis for a deep and long-lasting anti-Jacobin persuasion that lingered long after French Revolution played itself out. In short, she tracks growth of the anti-Jacobin sensibility (234) and its surprising but powerful effect on antebellum American life and culture. Her book traces the vital role that fear of democratic violence played in genesis of abolitionism, antiwar movement, and support for public education (9). As a fascinating subtheme, work also interrogates power of words, specifically links between violent language and violent acts. Indeed, Cleves writes that the power of violent words as an instrument of battle is what drives her book (13).While some welcomed democratizing potential of French Revolution in 1790s, American conservatives reacted with horror. From Federalist podiums and Calvinist pulpits across New England came potent, visceral counterattacks on destabilizing democratic excesses in France. Cleves argues that to anti-Jacobins violence and bloodshed of French Revolution suggested how quickly a republic could devolve into anarchy, and it galvanized them into action. Anti-Jacobinism arose as a warning that violence by individual citizens and by state could destabilize social order in United States.Calvinists and Federalists tended toward pessimism about future and believed in man's fundamental depravity; hence, their skepticism about democracy and their support for strong institutions and use of force to check democratic passions and violence. When news of horrific violence reached United States, anti-Jacobins emphasized bloodthirsty and grisly in their denunciations of French excesses, connecting them to democracy run amok. They turned their animosity toward American democrats who they believed spoke same French democratic language of bloodshed. In process, they decoupled American and French Revolutions but then linked American and French democrats, attacking them through language of bloodshed and displacing anti-Jacobinism from external to internal enemies. Federalists, Alien and Sedition Acts of 1 798 seemed vital national security measures when viewed through these lenses.But even as they denounced violence, Federalists and their Calvinist supporters did so in an expressive language of violence that curiously, for a movement decrying riotousness, was dripping in blood. Anti-Jacobins developed a vocabulary and rhetoric of sensationalism to shock readers emotionally, emphasizing most horrific, depraved, and bloody scenes they could. Early American literature reflected this Gothic strain also, as Cleves shows in a close reading of Charles Brockden Brown's Wieland. And she reminds us, To pick up pen and write in lines of blood is a violent act (103). …