Southern Thought on European Nationalisms and the Creation of the Confederacy, 1820-186 Ann L
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University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations 2014 "Newest Born of Nations": Southern Thought on European Nationalisms and the Creation of the Confederacy, 1820-186 Ann L. Tucker University of South Carolina - Columbia Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Tucker, A. L.(2014). "Newest Born of Nations": Southern Thought on European Nationalisms and the Creation of the Confederacy, 1820-186. (Doctoral dissertation). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/2760 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. “Newest Born of Nations”: Southern Thought on European Nationalisms and the Creation of the Confederacy, 1820-1865 by Ann L. Tucker Bachelor of Arts Wake Forest University, 2005 Master of Arts University of South Carolina, 2008 ________________________________________________ Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2014 Accepted by: Don H. Doyle, Major Professor Thomas J. Brown, Committee Member Lacy K. Ford, Committee Member Paul D. Quigley, Committee Member Lacy K. Ford, Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies © Copyright by Ann L. Tucker, 2014 All Rights Reserved ii Acknowledgements I am thankful for the help, advice, and support that made this project possible. I want to thank my advisor, Don Doyle, for all of his help with this work and throughout my time at the University of South Carolina. His knowledge, insight, and guidance were invaluable to this project, and to my development as a historian. Paul Quigley’s comments as the outside committee member and second reader on this project provided me with much inspiration and encouragement. Tom Brown and Lacy Ford also shared their abundant expertise and provided critical guidance on my work. I wrote my masters thesis in a research seminar with Kent Germany, who helped me shape the early outlines of this research project. I am also thankful to these professors, and to the rest of the USC faculty, for teaching me about research, teaching, and the discipline of history. I have been fortunate to enjoy the support of the faculty and students not only at the University of South Carolina, but also at the University of Alabama and the University of Georgia. Kari Frederickson and my professors at Alabama helped me begin my career as a historian. The graduate students at all of these institutions have provided me with invaluable friendship, advice, and camaraderie. Particular thanks are due to Dave Prior, Michael Woods, and Beatrice Burton for sharing their knowledge of history. I also want to thank Vernon Burton for his generosity with his advice and his considerable knowledge of the historian’s craft. I could not have done any of this without the endless support of my family, who deserve more than just thanks. iii Abstract When nineteenth-century southern nationalists seceded from the Union and created a southern nation, they sought to justify their actions by situating the Confederacy as one of many aspiring nations seeking membership in the family of nations in the middle of the nineteenth century. To support their argument that the Confederacy constituted a legitimate and independent nation, southern nationalists claimed nineteenth century European nationalist movements as precedents for their own attempt at nation- building, using the southern nation’s supposed similarity to, or, at times, differences from, these European aspiring nations to legitimize the Confederacy. Such claims built on a long antebellum precedent in which southern opinion-makers analyzed events abroad through the lens of their own national values, developing an international perspective on issues of nationhood. As they debated the revolutions of 1848, southern commentators used this discourse on nationalism abroad to distinguish between the national values that were and were not acceptable to conservative slave-holders, clarifying an altered southern definition and vision of liberal nationalism. When southerners turned to creating an independent southern nation, secessionists utilized this international understanding of nationalism to claim that because the aspiring southern nation followed the model of new and aspiring nations in Europe, particularly Italy, it deserved independence. Such an argument, while popular domestically, failed to resonate with Europeans and northerners who understood the contrast between slavery and liberal nationalism, forcing Confederates to re-evaluate their claims about the iv international place of southern nationalism. In response, some Confederates intensified their comparisons, further manipulating the ideals and symbols of nationalism to continue positioning the Confederacy within the broader trends of nineteenth century nationalism. More conservative Confederates rejected comparisons between southern nationalism and more liberal European nationalisms, claiming that the Confederacy actually purified nationalism through slavery. From the earliest stirrings of southern nationalism to the defeat of the Confederacy, southern analysis of European nationalisms played a critical role in shaping southern thought about nationhood. v Table of Contents Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ iii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iv Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter One: Debating Nationalism, 1820-1849..............................................................14 Chapter Two: An Internationalizing South, 1850-1859 ...................................................54 Chapter Three: Internationalizing Secession, 1860-1861 .................................................88 Chapter Four: Defending International Comparisons, 1861-1865 .................................119 Chapter Five: Crafting Conservative Comparisons, 1861-1865 .....................................159 Bibliography ....................................................................................................................191 vi Introduction When southerners seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, they were faced with the immediate necessity of forging a nationalism for their new nation, a necessity that led them to look outward as well as inward for inspiration. As southern nationalists sought to construct a national narrative that would justify their place among the family of nations, they turned to the images and symbols of other aspiring nations, drawing comparisons between their nascent nationalism and nationalist movements in Europe in order to define and legitimize the southern nation. These comparisons drew on a long antebellum precedent in which southern intellectual elites had analyzed foreign nationalism through the lens of their own national values, a process that had aided southerners in refining their beliefs about what it meant to be a nation. Upon secession, southern nationalists utilized this precedent to claim both similarities with and differences from nationalist movements in Europe as a way of explaining, legitimizing, and gaining support for the aspiring southern nation. Although southern nationalism was in many ways a domestic response to American issues such as slavery, southern nationalists also embraced an international perspective on their attempt at nation-building, turning to almost a century of nationalist thought and activity to help them justify the creation of an independent southern nation. Along with slavery, religion, and the American Revolution, nationalist movements in Europe stood as an inspiration upon which southern nationalists drew as they sought to forge a nationalism that would explain the values and meaning of the new southern 1 nation, as well as to cultivate loyalty amongst and win support for the Confederacy from fellow southerners. 1 As southern opinion-makers looked abroad, they found much to admire in the values exhibited by nationalist movements in Europe. From the self-determination of the Greek people in the 1820s-1830s, to the republicanism of the revolutions of 1848, to the fight against tyranny embodied by the Italian Risorgimento, southern intellectuals admired the values in these revolutions that they believed echoed their own national values. 2 This support was not unqualified, however; the southern elite was deeply conservative and committed to slavery, which left southern analysts wary of European nationalists’ cries for freedom and liberty. 3 Most nationalist movements in Europe were 1 Some influential analyses of the origins of southern nationalism include Drew Gilpin Faust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988); John McCardell, The Idea of a Southern Nation: Southern Nationalists and Southern Nationalism: 1830-1860 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979); Anne Sarah Rubin, A Shattered Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Confederacy, 1861-1868 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005). Historians