Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism

Roberts (history, Western Illinois U.) argues that the spate of popular revolutions across Europe in 1848 had a profound impact on how Americans at the time thought about revolution, democracy, foreign policy, race, gender, and other matters. Of most enduring impact, he says, was the questioning about whether and how the US was different from any other place in the world--as the pilgrims had proclaimed at the very beginning and as every candidate for public office still echoes today. But he also contends that its more immediate effect was to spark the Civil War 12 years later. His topics include competing rhetorics of revolution in the 1848 US presidential campaign, the conservative Christian alliance, the South and the crisis of 1850, and the anti-slavery movement as a crisis of American exceptionalism. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Timothy Mason Roberts is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Western Illinois University.