Newest Born of Nations by Ann L. Tucker

Author:Ann L. Tucker [Tucker, Ann L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), 19th Century
ISBN: 9780813944296
Google: xxy1DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
Published: 2020-06-29T00:37:56+00:00

For conservative southerners, an international perspective confirmed their broader belief that southern conservatism was superior to the liberalism found among European nationalists and northern abolitionists. While the South was more conservative than these groups, however, the U.S. South was not the only conservative region in the nineteenth-century Atlantic world. On the contrary, more conservative governments such as monarchies, aristocracies, and empires appeared to be consolidating their power throughout Europe and even the Americas, first with the defeat of the revolutions of 1848 and then with the division of the United States. The seeming failure of liberal republics in the face of powerful monarchs and emperors suggested that liberal ideals of governance might be in retreat throughout the world. With liberalism potentially declining, the more conservative forms of government such as monarchy and aristocracy appeared to be growing in strength and influence.47 For the most conservative of southerners, an international context corroborated their conviction that conservatism created a more stable, successful form of government.

While southerners’ American heritage was strong enough that the majority of even conservative white slaveholding southerners retained their desire for some form of republican governance, a few conservative secessionists took their respect for conservatism to the extreme and supported the inclusion of elements of nonrepublican governments in the new southern nation.48 Drawing inspiration from the governments that had successfully opposed the European revolutions allowed southerners to cast themselves in the role of the victor, rather than the vanquished. Such a path also supported conservative secessionists’ desire to avoid the feared excesses of revolutions. As they debated the best form of nationhood for the South, an international context taught a small minority of the most extreme of conservatives that the South should temper its republicanism with aristocracy, or even forgo democracy and republicanism altogether and adopt a monarchical government.

Southern willingness to consider aristocratic or monarchical forms of government derived once again from the longstanding white southern concern with the full implications of democracy.49 Although the idea of emulating European aristocracies was extreme in the context of American republicanism, it did provide an option for achieving the limitation of democracy and liberty that more conservative secessionists believed would be the defining characteristics of the southern nation. J. S. L. argued in the Southern Field and Fireside, for example, that the “South to-day exhibits the only perpetual democratic government possible—that is, a democratic aristocracy—an aristocracy of race, with a democracy of power,” which would protect against “revolutions from within, and tyranny from without.” The Augusta Daily Constitutionalist found this statement worthy of republication.50 Similarly, an author for DeBow’s Review asserted that “aristocracy is the only safeguard of liberty.”51 A European-style aristocracy potentially provided protection for the power of the white citizens of the southern nation, protection that would be necessary for the South to fulfill its self-proclaimed mission in creating the best form of nationalism.

While aristocracy had typically been anathema to the idea of republicanism, for conservative secessionists the racial hierarchy of the South nonetheless meant that aristocracy felt familiar, comfortable, and like a natural fit for a people who defined themselves through social inequality.

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