On the barricades in Paris, February 1848
The Revolutions of 1848 were a decisive event in European history and in the development of democracy. But they seem to be virtually unknown in the United States. The Britannica Online defines those revolutions briefly as follows:
[A] series of republican revolts against European monarchies, beginning in Sicily, and spreading to France, Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire. They all ended in failure and repression, and were followed by widespread disillusionment among liberals.That definition barely scratches the surface of what "1848" signified. In Germany, the first democratically-elected Parliament met in the Paulkirche in Frankfurt, which today is kind of a memorial to the democratic movement in Germany. The Britannica Online article goes on to talk more about events in individual countries. In France, for instance:
The revolution was successful in France alone; the Second Republic and universal manhood suffrage were established, but the quarrel between the supporters of the république démocratique and the partisans of république démocratique et sociale culminated in a workers' insurrection in June 1848.What does all this have to do with the Southern Confederacy and the War of the Rebellion in the United States?
The editors of De Bow's Review seemed to think there was some relation. They published a long, unsigned article on the Revolutions of 1848, "French Revolutionary History" in the Dec. 1860 number and "The French Revolution of 1848" in the Feb. 1861 number. De Bow's Review was generally considered the leading intellectual publication for the Southern planters, though of course that doesn't mean that its articles necessarily reflected every policy of the Confederate States of America (CSA). But the CSA was in the process of forming at the time these articles were being published. South Carolina declared its secession in December 1860, with other slave states following in early 1861; Lincoln took office as President in March 1861.
It's always possible that De Bow's Review was publishing these articles for purely academic value or to provide pleasant distraction for Southern gentlemen worried over the victory of the party they called the Black Republicans in the 1860 Presidential election. But I doubt it. Because the slaveowners were preparing for their own rebellion and this two-part article appears to me to try to offer some conceptual background - or at least propaganda references - to a recent example of revolutions.
I won't go into the ins and outs of whether the Confederate revolt constitutes a revolution in a social-science sense. I'm going with rebellion. The CSAers did call themselves Rebels, after all.
To make sense of the De Bow's Review article, I'll have to give a little more background on the French revolution of 1848.
Those known as "republicans" in France, Germany and elsewhere fought for classical liberal ideals: individual freedoms of speech, press and assembly; equal protection of the laws; broadbased male suffrage (though property requirements were fine for many of them); constitutional and representative government; and, freedom of businesses from governmental restrictions and from any formal obligations to labor. They were the partisans of the république démocratique in France.
German elected National Assembly in Franfurt's Paulskirche, 1848-9The business class (capitalists) were the social leaders of the republican movement, while aristocrats seeking to hang on to their power largely tied to landholding stemming from the centuries old feudal system backed the monarchs and the royalist parties. Neither European socialism nor the labor movement originated in 1848. But 1848 was a decisive turning point in the development of both. They were the partisans of the république démocratique et sociale in France. From 1848 on, it was clear that the urban working classes in Europe were interested in additional demands beyond those of formal democracy: protection of labor organization; a more fair distribution of wealth; the widest possible distribution of male suffrage without property requirements.
After the French Revolution of 1789 and its Napoleonic aftermath, some of the business party joined with the aristocrats in supporting the constitutional monarchy of Louis Phillipe, known as the July Monarchy for the 1830 revolutionary movement which brought it to power. As the anonymous De Bow's Review essayist describes it:
At the outset, the aim and tendency of the July revolution of 1830 were republican. The popular chieftains would hardly have been so fool-hardy as to stake their lives and their fortunes at the hazard of the dice, for the purpose of inaugurating the solemn farce of constitutional monarchy, a form of government which had just been hissed from the stage as a miserable abortion. But the aristocracy of wealth, at the head of which stood the banker, Lafitte, and the prudent moderation of Lafayette, strangled the rising republic at its birth. They counselled the adoption of constitutional government, based upon the English system, with an irresponsible king, and a ministry, responsible to the chamber of deputies, and to the people. This counsel prevailed.The standpoint taken by the anonymous author here is anti-monarchist. But the article is pervaded with an ambiguous attitude toward the virtues of dictatorial measures. Napoleon Bonaparte, for instance, is described as follows: "Morally considered, Napoleon was a misshapen monster; intellectually, he was a giant." Continually immediately, Napoleon is also described as "a genius occupying such a high and lofty attitude, that, after the lapse of another century, his historical portraiture will rather seem a myth than a reality to the yet unborn millions of future generations."
The writer describes the support of the July Monarchy somewhat vaguely, but in terms common at the time:
The influence of anew conservative power had made itself felt at this important conjuncture. A new political element had made its appearance, which was to be the future arbiter of the fate of dynasties and governments. During the prevalence of the feudal system, society was divided into two classes only - the rich and the poor. After its final extinction, commerce and manufacture became important branches of industry, and a middle class was called into existence, which holds the balance of power of modern society, being equally removed from the demoralizing luxuries of wealth, and the degrading want of poverty. In France, this class is know by the significant name of bourgeoisie (burghers), and it is the class which declared in favor of constitutional monarchy, and its weight of influence decided the contest between the republicans and the constitutionalists.The author isn't consistent in the use of his terms. But the distinctions to which he refers are important to understanding his argument, and how he differentiates sharply between two types of 1848 revolutionaries.
His description there is misleading in that the business class - which is more or less what "bourgeoisie" means - was the leading force among "republicans" as well as "constitutionalists", the latter being a distinctly more conservative group. The business influence was stronger earlier in his reign, and he was known as the "bourgeois king", as opposed to the Bourbon line that had been overthrown in the first French Revolution
The notion of revolution in the American South in 1861 was a very mixed one. On the one hand, the Southern slaveholders were rebelling against the existing government by force and violence and committing treason in doing so. And in that mode they wanted to cast their actions as a continuation or normal historical development of the American Revolution.
On the other hand, the slaveowners and much of the white South lived in perpetual terror of revolution. Or, more specifically, "servile insurrection", slave revolts. They also viewed Northern Abolitionists and the Republican Party as dangerous, radical democrats and revolutionaries out to incite slaves and free whites in the South to horrible uprisings. (Yes, it is hard to imagine today's Republican Party could ever have been seen that way. But history can be complicated that way.)
That ambiguity is on display in the anonymous article. For instance, in initial setup for the piece:
The French revolution of 1848 was, like every other popular commotion, frothy and turbulent on the surface. It impregnated the political atmosphere with mephitic vapors, bubbling up from the miasmatic sub-stratum which underlies, everywhere, the ocean mass of the body politic.On the one hand, we have the "revolutionary energy of the people" compared to "holy writ" and the sleeping lion with his recuperative powers having a healing orgasm. (No doubt some complex Freudian message is concealed there.) On the other hand, this positive healing orgasmic energy is also described as "mephitic vapors, bubbling up from the miasmatic sub-stratum which underlies, everywhere, the ocean mass of the body politic", i.e., the common people. And the writer's definition of the "best government" is likely a good reflection of the slaveowners' self-conception of their ideal order. Innovation - like, say, prohibiting the owning of human beings as property - could be tolerated only so long as it was consistent with preserving "the moral, social, and intellectual development of the society". None of which, in their view, were compatible with a society based on free labor.
But it furnished confirmation, strong as proof of holy writ, that the lion was not dead, but that he had only been sleeping; that the revolutionary energy of the people had just recovered from its apathy; that the recuperative powers of nature had produced one of those periodical orgasms which cast out the diseased tissues [say what?!?], and restore the healthy condition of its vital functions. It impressed the inquiring mind with the conviction that the best government is that which preserves social order, secures the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number; and treads the path of innovation only so far as it is compatible with the moral, social, and intellectual development of the society which is to be governed.
It's fascinating to imagine how gentleman planters in the antebellum South would have pictured themselves in relation to this picture of the regular, non-monarchist republicans as the 1848 revolution approached - or rather the supporters of the republican movement led by the non-monarchist business class. He describes the reactionaries among the nobility as plotting to restore the old Bourbon line to the throne of France:
But the republicans were far better organized, as a political party, than the remnant of the legtimitist [pro-Bourbon] emigrants. They were not in possession of wealth, but they had strong arms and stout hearts, and a will that knew no repulse. They met at stated periods for counsel and deliberation, in subterranean cellars and secret vaults, which escaped the detection even of the vigilant eye and the keen espionage of a Paris detective police. In these secluded haunts of conspiracy, they manufactured arms, made powder, and moulded balls [bullets]. The members of these societies of carbonari recognized each other by secret signs and passwords; they knew one another in no other way; so that neither accident nor treachery could divulge the mystery of this tangled web of conspiracy. Their government [i.e., their secret organization] was strictly military; and implicit obedience to the behests of the chief of the section, or of the principal commander, was one of the first obligations to which the novice was required to subscribe, at his first initiation, after having been sworn upon the crucifix. The signal, which was understood by all, being once given, they rushed forth from their gloomy cells, like so many gnomes from the bowels of the earth, panoplied, and armed, and determined to exterminate the myrmidons of royalty, who should resist or oppose the execution of their ultimate designs. An army of thirty thousand of these nameless sans-culottes [militant poor people] marched, at a moment's notice, to the various headquarters, previously marked and designated in secret conclave; and barricades were instantly thrown up, as by magic, int he streets of Paris, where the locality seemed most favorable for defence or resistance.Even allowing for a literary language at the time that generally seems flowery to us today, this is pretty dreamy, romantic prose. How did the slaveowners, desperately afraid of "servile insurrections" and invading armies of John Browns, but also fired up to fight the hated Yankees, process such a description? Did they identify themselves with those desperate men plotting in cellars, dodging the Paris detectives, get ready to pour forth "like so many gnomes from the bowels of the earth"?
I suspect that they more likely hoped for such dedicated followers among the whites of the South who would do most of the plotting and pouring forth, while they would enjoy the romance of Rebellion in their drawing rooms. The following image, following immediately on the last paragraph, was probably far more agreeable for roles in which they might picture themselves:
The republicans, controlled by the dictates of prudence and moderation — traits of character for which they are not very remarkable —wisely concealed, at the outset, the true object, of the insurrectionary scheme. They courted the favor, and followed the conservative spirit of the National Guard—the citizen-soldiery of France — in order to gain their sympathies, and secure their co-operation. The republican chiefs led the van of the revolutionary army with such admirable tact and precision, that the result which they had in view, was inevitable, and the anticipations of their most sanguine hopes were realized. They walked arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, and side by side, with the moderate opposition leaders of the chamber of deputies. They made themselves ostensibly the champions of reform, the political hobby upon which Thiers and Odilon Barrot expected to ride into power: but, "Down with Guizot.!" "Long live reform!" meant, with the republicans, nothing more nor less than "Down with the monarchy!" "Long live the republic!" [my emphasis]More on this topic in Part 2 tomorrow.
Tags: confederate heritage month 2009, revolutions of 1848
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