Distant Revolutions: 1848 and the Challenge to American Exceptionalism

Acknowledgments

ix Acknowledgments I have accrued many debts in writing this book. Most recently I am obligated to Richard Holway at the University of Virginia Press, who accepted the manuscript but who challenged me to rethink and to clarify what the work says about antebellum America. Also to Dick’s credit, readers whom he contacted provided timely and useful critiques of the work. I am indebted to Andre Fleche and, in particular, to Carl Guarneri, whose thoughtful critique of the book’s organization and argument improved it dramatically. Other individuals read earlier versions or parts of the work and shared their suggestions and wisdom with me. I am grateful in this regard to Charles Capper, Neil Jumonville, Edward Kohn, Cadoc Leighton, Larry Reynolds, Andrew Robertson, Frank Towers, Major Wilson, and the late Duncan MacLeod. I also especially thank Daniel Walker Howe, who supervised my work as a graduate student and who has continued to o≠er critique, advice, and encouragement. Dan’s scholarship and mentoring are both exemplary. Several institutions provided financial support for this project. I wish to thank the Virginia Historical Society, the University of Oxford Modern History Faculty, the London Historical Society, and Bilkent University for providing research fellowships. I also thank various libraries and archives for allowing me materials to study and space to work. These include the Divinity School Library of Duke University; the Houghton Library at Harvard University; the Kansas State Historical Society; the Library Company of Philadelphia; the Library of Congress; the Library of Manchester College , Oxford; the Massachusetts Historical Society; the New York Public Library; the Strozier Library at Florida State University; the Tennessee State Library and Archives; the South Carolina Historical Society; the Southern Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina– x Acknowledgments Chapel Hill; the Virginia Historical Society; and the University of Georgia Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Earlier versions of the arguments made here appeared in “The United States and the Revolutions of 1848” (co-authored by Daniel W. Howe), in The Revolutions in Europe 1848–1849, edited by R. J. W. Evans and Hartmut Pogge von Strandmann (2002), reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press; “The United States and the Revolutions of 1848,” in The European Revolutions of 1848 and the Americas, edited by Guy Thomson (2002), reprinted with permission of the Institute of Latin American Studies (now the Institute for the Study of the Americas); “Now the Enemy Is Within Our Borders: The Impact of European Revolutions in American Perceptions of Violence before the Civil War,” originally published in ATQ, volume 17, no. 3 (September 2003), reprinted by permission of the University of Rhode Island; and “The European Revolutions of 1848 and Antebellum Violence in Kansas,” Journal of the West, volume 44, no. 1 (Winter 2005), copyright ©2005 by ABC-CLIO, Inc., and reprinted with permission of ABC-CLIO. An earlier version of chapter 2 appeared as “Diplomatische Reaktionen der Vereinigten Staaten waehrend der Revolutionsjahre 1848/ 49,” in Achtundvierziger Forty-Eighters: Die deutsche Revolution von 1848/49, die Vereinigten Staaten und der amerikanische, edited by Wolfgang Hochbruck , Ulrich Bachteler, and Henning Zimmermann (2000), and is republished by permission of Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot. Parts of chapters 3 and 7 originally appeared in “‘Revolutions Have Become the Bloody Toy of the Multitude’: European Revolutions, the South, and the Crisis of 1850,” Journal of the Early Republic, volume 25, no. 2 (Summer 2005), and are reprinted by permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. A portion of chapter 5 originally appeared in “Margaret Fuller’s Rome and the Problem of Provincial American Democracy,” Patterns of Prejudice, volume 40, no. 1 (February 2006), which is available at http://www.informaworld.com. My family and several friends inspired and assisted me in this project. My parents, Millard and Anita Roberts, and my siblings, Anne and David, and their families provided much prayer and encouragement to persist in this project, despite their ba±ement at the byzantine process of bringing it to completion. Kurt and Anita Berends served up many warm meals and laughter at Oxford. Rigg and Denise Mohler o≠ered their home and a vehicle, despite their growing family, during my many trips to Washington , D.C. The Mohlers, along with Steve Howell, Mike Poerksen, and their Acknowledgments xi families, have remained friends and advocates over the years despite the long distance between us, as well as our di≠erent preferences in college football. I finally wish...