"Crete the Opening Wedge": Nationalism and International Affairs in Postbellum America

This essay explores American interest in a seemingly obscure insurrection on the island of Crete from 1866 to 1869. Focusing in particular on the writings of northern Republicans and their Democratic critics, it suggests that these groups, immersed though they were in their ongoing North-South sectional conflict, looked to developments beyond the eastern United States to articulate and affirm rival understandings of their country. In fact, the precise meaning of the distinction between things foreign and domestic was itself a matter of dispute, with northern Republicans often presuming that Americans were defined by a dedication to the struggle of "civilization" against "barbarisms" at home and abroad. In interpreting the insurrection, and northern Republican interest in it, Democrats found a means of expressing their sectional-partisan grievances and of describing their more rigidly and adamantly racial understanding of American identity. Both groups integrated discussions of Crete into a broader argument over national character that was grounded in competing understandings about what was possible and what was good in society. Both, moreover, turned to Crete in the context of their immersion in and perceptions of society in the North and South.