The following is a book review written by my friend Nick Sacco. Nick holds degrees in History and Music Performance from Lindenwood University and is currently a teaching assistant for the Orchard Farm School District in St. Charles, Missouri. He has also worked for the National Park Service at Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site and the Missouri History Museum Library and Research Center.

     In studying the American Civil War, many historians have emphasized the importance of the American Revolution of 1776 and the differing interpretations of that legacy that emerged between Northerners and Southerners in its aftermath. However, this perspective – while important – leaves out substantial political and social developments and conflicts that arose throughout the world during the 19th century, including issues of race, emancipation of serfs and slaves, class conflict, labor, and national self-determination. In his book The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict, Andre M. Fleche attempts to analyze the American Civil War within an international context and demonstrate how the war fit within the global attempt to answer the “great national question” throughout the 19th century.

     Following the American Revolution, nationalistic revolutions were enacted throughout the world by Europeans, North and South Americans, and other nationalities in an effort to create independent nation-states that were free of aristocratic and monarchial rule. Furthermore, these “nationalists” often attempted to create nations that unified people who had a common language, religion, and culture. There are many examples of such conflicts. Throughout the 1820s Spain lost almost all of its colonies in the Americas, while Greece fought for its independence from Turkey. During the 1830s Poland attempted to break away from Russia, while Belgium successfully seceded from The Netherlands. However, the primary conflict that Fleche focuses on is the Revolutions of 1848, in which several countries – including France, Germany, Italy, and Hungary – attempted nationalist revolutions.

     The Revolutions of 1848 started in France. Liberals and reformers in that country attempted to have a banquet celebration for George Washington’s birthday, but King Louis Phillipe refused to allow the celebration to take place. This led to mass protests and rioting throughout the streets of Paris; Louis Phillipe abdicated his throne the next day. A provisional government composed of liberals and socialists was put in place that enacted universal manhood suffrage and set a date for the creation of a new constitution. Later, the government removed African slavery from its colonial possessions and attempted to establish national workshops for the unemployed under the theory that everyone had the “right to work”.

    Soon, the zeal for revolution spread throughout Europe: Germany attempted to unify as a country with the rights of free speech and universal suffrage enacted; Italy attempted to unify by removing Austrian influence in the north and despotic monarchy in the south; and Hungary attempted to create an independent nation and remove itself from the Austrian Empire. Ireland also continued its ongoing attempt to gain independence from Great Britain. Eventually, all of these movements failed.

     Initially, Americans north and south eagerly embraced and supported the Revolutions of 1848. President Zachary Taylor sent Ambrose Dudley Mann to Hungary with the authority to recognize Hungary as a legitimate nation, much to the anger of the Austrian Empire. When Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth visited America in 1851-52, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome everywhere he went. However, as the revolutions became more radical, some Americans began to denounce the movement. For example, George Templeton Strong claimed that the revolutions were composed of “cowardly and clamorous mobs,” while Louisa S. McCord feared the tendencies of “socialism” she believed were inherent in the movements.

     Following the revolutions, many Europeans immigrated to the U.S throughout the 1850s. Fleche uses the impact of immigration in St. Louis during this time to demonstrate how European-American immigrants prepared for the American Civil War when it came in 1861, with a particular emphasis on the roles of German and Irish immigrants. Many St. Louis Germans – especially those directly involved in the 1848 Revolutions – dedicated themselves to promoting and upholding the idea of representative government. America, they contended, would be able to promote liberty for all citizens by eliminating slavery and the feared “Slave Power.” To the Germans, elite Southern slaveholders resembled the aristocrats of Europe who had destroyed the goals of the 1848 Revolutions. When the Civil War broke out, the Germans of St. Louis fought for the United States, almost to the man.

     Meanwhile, many Irish immigrants looked with suspicion on the activities of the Germans. Many feared that embracing abolitionism would hinder their efforts to be fully accepted as Americans. They also feared the increased competition free blacks would bring to the labor force and the possibility of mass unemployment. Finally, many abolitionists also harbored strong anti-Catholic sentiments, which did much to alienate Irish-Americans from the movement. When the Civil War broke out, most Irish St. Louisians supported the Confederacy. Irish Catholic Priest John Bannon believed the Federal Government had become a “tyrannical central government” and actively recruited Irishmen to join the First Missouri Confederate Brigade. By the war’s end, three Irish regiments (two from St. Louis) and a battery had served for the Confederacy, as opposed to only one United States regiment from the entire state of Missouri.

     After the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861, both the United States and the Confederacy realized they would have to argue their case before the rest of the world in order to garner support for their respective causes. Within three days of Fort Sumter, the Confederates dispatched Ambrose Dudley Mann (the same diplomat who had gone to Hungary for President Taylor) to promote the Confederate cause.

     The U.S. found itself in a challenging position when it came to justifying its attempt at national reunification. This challenge came from what Fleche describes as an “ironic position”; the U.S. – in almost every case since the American Revolution – had actively supported the nationalistic activities of revolutionaries all over the world in the name of self-determination and liberty. Now the Lincoln government had to create a theory of American nationalism that would convince the rest of the world that preventing the Confederates from creating their own nation would be more beneficial than any alternative. To justify this, the U.S. created a theory that balanced liberalism and conservatism; by preserving national order, effective representative government would be maintained and liberty would flourish. Secretary of State William Seward explained that Confederate independence would lead to anarchy throughout the world, eventually leading to more bloody revolutions throughout Europe. Many Unionist politicians and intellectuals acknowledged and supported the “right of revolution,” but they argued that right needed to be balanced with the idea of “national self-preservation,” that it could only be used as a last resort, and that this was not one of those instances.

     Confederates enthusiastically compared themselves to the European revolutionaries of the past sixty years who had fought for self-determination and self-government. If Hungarians, Poles, and Italians could fight for their independence, why couldn’t they? They pointed out that prior U.S. policy in 1848 had supported nationalistic rebellion. One unidentified Confederate supporter stated that “every people” have “a right to judge of the kind of government (whether monarchial, autocratic or republican) which could best advance their happiness and progress”. In addition, as the war dragged on for several years, arguments were made that the Confederates ability to fight the U.S. on the battlefield proved their worth as a nation, one that should immediately be recognized and accepted into the “family of nations.”

      Fleche argues that Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 proved to be a real turning point for both sides as they continued to define their respective theories of nationalism. For the U.S. – which had initially catered its nationalistic definition to the established, conservative leaders of Europe – the Emancipation Proclamation represented a revolutionary measure that unified the Union cause with the causes of “liberty, equality, economic justice, and liberal nationalism” that the revolutionaries of Europe had been fighting for over the past sixty years. U.S. Senator Charles Sumner understood as much when he wrote a letter to President Lincoln explaining the positive consequences of emancipation: “If our cause in Europe could be put openly on this ground… the rebellion would receive a death blow.” Unionist intellectuals also reinforced the argument that Southern planters were the same as the European aristocrats who had quashed the nationalist goals of 1848 throughout Europe; their victory would ultimately push liberty and equality aside in favor of wealth, nobility, and title.

     For the Confederates, emancipation posed a serious problem, forcing Confederate intellectuals to devise a theory that made slavery and nationalism compatible with each other. Most argued that slavery was not only essential to national stability, but also enhanced it. Slavery, they said, removed the class and racial conflicts that had troubled Northern free labor society and had directed the radical ideologies of the 1848 European revolutionaries, ultimately leading to the failure of that movement. The preservation of slavery would be upheld by promoting “white republicanism,” which would promote equality amongst whites while keeping blacks in a subordinate state of bondage. “White republicanism” rejected “black republicanism” which advocated abolitionism and equality amongst all races, and “red republicanism” which promoted socialistic ideas such as the “right to work” and was advocated by many Europeans and “forty-eighters.” Albert Taylor Bledsoe, a University of Virginia professor promoting the Confederate cause in Britain, defined and promoted white republicanism by explaining that the fallacious theory of “inalienable rights of men” was “cradled” in France during the French Revolution, which in turn had led to the “diabolical massacres of St. Domingo” [the Haitian Revolution]. Racial equality damaged true republican government and threatened to lead to disastrous results, such as an insurrectionary war or anarchy. Confederates continued to make these arguments after the Emancipation Proclamation until the very end of the war, even after slavery was completely destroyed in many parts of the South.

     Andre Fleche’s study of the American Civil War within the context of nationalist uprisings throughout the world allows us to better understand the political and social climate of the 19th Century leading up to the Civil War. It shows us that not only did American leaders differ when it came to the place of slavery in American society; it shows us that the differing interpretations of world events and what they meant for American society along with what constituted a legitimate nation-state all played a role in leading the United States and the Confederacy to war in April 1861. For some 19th Century thinkers, the question “How much country must a man love to be a genuine patriot?” was not as easily answered as it might be today. Finally, Fleche reminds us that America was not a “city on a hill”. Global events shaped American intellectual thought just as much as events within the country. In our modern world of globalization, this fact rings just as true today as it did 150 years ago.