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

Not so long ago, most historians viewed the Federalist Party as comprised of losers who were out of touch with the democratic reality created by the American Revolution. In the 1990s, however, scholars began to take the Federalists more seriously.¹ Federalists may not have understood the egalitarian impulses of the day, but they were at least committed republicans whose ideas reflected important currents of their times. But even this reappraisal attributed to those ideas a weak legacy that had little impact on later ages and the democratic traditions of the American people. Cleves offers an important corrective to this understanding of the Federalists.

Language is the key to Cleves' methodology. She begins by taking the overheated rhetoric used by Federalist New England ministers at face value, tracing its ideological roots to the Calvinist belief in the depravity of man. Based on this assumption, Federalist Calvinists thought that human passions could be too easily swayed toward violence. Relying mainly on published sources, Cleves follows this rhetoric throughout the 1790s and into the reform movements of the nineteenth century.

A fear of violence lay behind the Federalist concern with limiting the excesses of democracy. This fear found its most eloquent expression in the Federalist opposition to the French Revolution and the anti-Jacobin rhetoric used to attack Jeffersonian Republicans. This rhetoric extended to the issue of slavery almost from its inception. In the nineteenth century, the call for public education became a means of training the young to avoid passionate violence. The same concerns appeared in the anti-war movement that accompanied the War of 1812. During the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s, the interest in limiting violence—especially against slaves—became an important component of the abolitionist movement. In short, the Federalists' conservative worldview, and its language, underpinned much of the progressive (small p) and liberal reform of the antebellum period.

Although Cleves demonstrates an impressive mastery of the sources, and the subtlety with which the language of violence could be employed, she seems focused on such key terms as massacre, reign of terror, and guillotine in a manner that fails to do justice to a larger context after the 1790s. It is not always clear whether the salient Federalist ideas had been transferred from generation to generation and group to group with all of their force intact or whether their once peculiar Calvinist meaning eventually eroded, leaving only a generic language of anti-violence. Whatever the full extent of Federalist influence, Cleves has written an important study not only about the uses of political rhetoric but also about the legacy of the Federalist Party.