Battling "the Slaveholders' 'Reign of Terror'": Anti-Jacobinism and Abolitionism in the Early American Republic

Following the September Massacres, American conservatives began to raise their voices against "Jacobins" within the United States. Over the following six decades, anti-Jacobinism frequently served as a tarring brush to indict domestic democratic movements. Because of its remote origins and partisan qualities, American historians have been reluctant to treat anti-Jacobinism as a significant cultural dynamic within the United States. However, this article argues that the argument against bloodshed embedded within American reactions to the French Revolution inspired a powerful opposition to the violence of slavery from the early national era through the Civil War.