The Revolutions of 1848 set Europe ablaze. The flames erupted in Paris on February 22nd and spread to the German states, the Austrian Empire, the Italian states, Scandinavia and beyond. In their geographical extent alone, these revolts were unique. From a historical perspective, this was the only truly European wide uprising that would – in the longer run – alter the Continent’s political and philosophical landscape.
In spite of the scale and ferocity of the upheaval, its immediate impact on the political status quo was relatively small as most of the short-lived struggles failed in their aims and intentions. In fact, one could argue that the real impression of 1848 was felt more strongly in the United States.
Disenchanted Europeans
Although all of the revolutions shared a similar ideological framework, there was no concerted effort or central coordination between the various uprisings. The drive for renewal was spearheaded by intellectuals, students and minor nobility members (many of them serving soldiers). They were joined by a mass of anonymous protagonists.
A coalition of liberals, socialists, republicans and nationalists were joined by poor peasants and urban workers calling for political change. Their demands included the democratization of society, a constitutional (Republican) government, universal suffrage, employment laws and human rights.
First and foremost, this was a grouping together of young Europeans; their spirit was intense and passionate. The fictional character of the student Frédéric in Gustave Flaubert’s novel L’éducation sentimentale (Sentimental Education, 1869) served as the archetype of this “génération quarante-huitarde” (generation of forty-eight) that thirsted for liberty and got drunk on anticipation.
The tumbling “old order” of autocratic rulers was to be replaced by a progressive regime of aspiring liberals, democrats and patriots.
A pandemic of radical ideas swept the Continent, was spread by cosmopolitan academics and political exiles, and transmitted by an increasingly powerful and diffused press. In this transnational urban phenomenon youngsters, dreaming of a liberated Italy, a unified Germany, an independent Poland or a renewed Greece, took to the streets and attacked the institutions of political power.
The revolutions created a stage of charismatic and gifted actors in which women played prominent roles too. For politically engaged Europeans, it was an all-encompassing moment of shared experience in which the promise of a better future could be made a reality there and then.
In February and March 1848, disorder mushroomed from city to city. Klemens von Metternich, the Austrian Chancellor, fled from Vienna to London; the Prussian Army was withdrawn from Berlin; the monarchies of Piedmont-Sardinia, Denmark and Naples issued liberal constitutions. It appeared that the Royal and aristocratic rulers of old were about to be swept aside.
These were the spring days of agitation; the euphoria of unanimity was intoxicating. It turned participants into brothers, branding them with expectations and, eventually, a deep sense of disillusionment.
An autumn of inner divisions and rivalries would follow, leading to a spectacular collapse of the grand project. In the summer of 1849, conservative regimes were violently re-established. Many participants were expelled. All reform movements were banned, repressed or driven underground.
The experience of forty-eight left its supporters with a feeling of hopelessness. In Italy, “fare un Quarantotto” (to do a ’48) entered common parlance in the sense of disturbing a situation to no great purpose.
Large numbers of former revolutionaries decided to leave the “Old World” and built a future elsewhere. The United States became a haven for disenchanted Europeans (where many of them became engaged in American politics and the Civil War).
Distant Spectacle
Because of Europe’s continuing colonial involvement, the agitation gained a global dimension. The news of revolution in Paris had a profound impact on the French Caribbean. In the young nations of Latin America, European revolutions galvanized radical political elites. The repressive measures adopted by British authorities to curtail rebellion at home triggered protests across the Empire. How were these events viewed across the Atlantic?
In 1848, the United States and Europe were in totally different places, be it politically, economically or culturally. America had just concluded its two-year long war with Mexico by signing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848.
As a result, the nation gained the Rio Grande as a boundary for Texas, ownership of California, as well as a large area comprising roughly half of New Mexico, most of Arizona, Nevada, Utah and Colorado.
In May that same year, Wisconsin was admitted to the Union as the thirtieth state. America was growing in size and influence. The mood was upbeat. Expectations soured when prospectors discovered gold at Sutter’s Creek in California, precipitating the Gold Rush of 1849.
Taking note of happenings in distant Europe, many Americans supported the 1848 revolutions as they drew a parallel between those uprisings and their own fight for independence. The American Revolutionary War became the prism through which America viewed European political events as they unfolded in the 1840s.
Some favored direct and active support for the revolutionary cause. Members of the “Young America Movement” advocated sending troops to reinforce the radical movements in Germany and Hungary and, at the same time, sever diplomatic ties with the autocratic governments of Prussia and Austria. Protestant churches, associating religion with liberty and democracy, also endorsed the insurgents.
Businessmen, observing Europe’s unstable economic environment, attempted to attract financiers to invest in “safe” American stocks and bonds.
To a majority of Americans the idea of democratic change in Europe was appealing – but from a safe distance. Ultimately, the United States provided minimal support for or intervention in the 1848 revolutions. Americans focused on building their own nation.
Contrary to the expectations of many European commentators at the time, the 1776 “experiment” of an American Republic had been a triumph. The Founding Fathers had laid the bricks for a promising future. It was up to their successors to raise the building and make America a great nation.
Americans did not believe that the disorder and violence that overwhelmed Europe could occur at home. The mighty Atlantic Ocean safeguarded them from similar radical uprisings to sweep the nation.
Few could have predicted that within little more than a dozen years there would be a bloody revolution on American soil that set in train fundamental socio-political changes.
Reform Movements
As violence swept across Europe, New England philosopher and social observer Ralph Waldo Emerson conducted a lecture tour of Great Britain. During this extended trip, he witnessed first-hand the protests of Chartists in England, the abdication of Louis Philippe in France, and the uprisings in Germany.
The events profoundly influenced the direction of his social and political thinking during the 1850s and 1860s – Emerson would become an abolitionist and a libertarian.
Although many Americans backed the revolutionary efforts in Europe, some of this support was lukewarm. In the political arena, Whigs and southern Democrats in Congress opposed any active support for the revolutions.
The most outspoken opposition came from pro-slavery advocates who feared that the social reforms taking place in France and on its Caribbean colonies of Guadeloupe and Martinique would lead to calls for the abolition of slavery in America. There was a good reason for their jitters.
The emancipation message was communicated in the city of New York by Frederick Douglass, editor of the North Star (founded in 1847) after his personal escape from slavery in Maryland. He predicted that the 1848 European revolutions which flashed with “lightning speed from heart to heart, from land to land,” would eventually traverse the entire globe.
Initial enthusiasm for these revolutions did have significant socio-political dimensions as they emboldened reform movements that perceived the events as a cautionary example of what could occur in the United States if measures were avoided to correct social wrongs.
One of the burning issues was the status of women in society, most of whom remained “civilly dead.” They had no legal identity separate from their husbands and were unable to sign contracts, own property, find access to education, or obtain a divorce. Many of the “laws of coverture” were still in place.
In response, activists began to meet, organize rallies and petition for women’s rights. The desire to address inequalities and challenge the country to live up to its revolutionary promise would lead to the calling of a two-day assembly in July 1848 at the Wesleyan Chapel in Seneca Falls, NY.
Despite a minimal amount of publicity and hostile media attention (local newspapers dubbed it “The Hen Convention”), three hundred participants gathered to debate Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Declaration of Sentiments.” It was the first Women’s Rights Convention to take place in the United States.
Declaration of Sentiments
Born on November 12, 1815, in Johnstown, NY, Elizabeth Cady enjoyed as privilege upbringing. Her father was a noted lawyer and state assemblyman. She was educated at Emma Hart Willard’s Female Seminary in Troy (established in 1815, this was the first institution to provide young women with an education equal to that of college-trained men).
Having married abolitionist lecturer Henry Stanton in 1840, the couple spent their honeymoon in London to attend the first World’s Anti-Slavery Convention at the Exeter Hall, Strand.
The event lasted for two weeks and attracted almost five hundred participants. It left a lasting impression upon her (in spite of an unedifying row about the attempted exclusion of female delegates).
Stanton modeled her Seneca Falls Declaration after Thomas Jefferson’s “Declaration of Independence,” outlining women’s inferior status. She formulated a list of demands, including the extension of voting rights, the granting of property entitlements, as well as equality in marriage and wider opportunities in education and employment.
The demand for womens suffrage proved controversial and caused heated discussion. It was the sole clause that attendees did not unanimously adopt.
Of the three hundred people in attendance, one hundred signed the amended “Declaration of Sentiments,” sixty-eight women and thirty-two men. A strong supporter of women’s voting rights, Frederick Douglass gave a powerful speech at the convention.
He also published an extensive “Report of the Women’s Right Convention” (including the Declaration) at his North Star office. It was no coincidence that the gathering was held in upstate New York, which had long been a hotbed of abolitionist activity. Many supporters of the anti-slavery movement eventually became a part of the struggle to obtain equal rights for women.
Seneca Falls set a precedent. Similar conventions became annual events where proponents met to discuss educational opportunities, divorce reform, property rights and employment issues, but both the Fourteenth (1868) and Fifteenth (1870) Amendments ignored the call for universal suffrage. A new generation of feminists continued the campaign for women’s rights.
On March 3, 1913, some eight thousand women gathered in Washington, DC to march in support of suffrage. When president-elect Thomas Woodrow Wilson arrived at Union Station the afternoon before his inauguration, there were only a few people present to greed him.
He was told that the crowd had moved to Pennsylvania Avenue to watch a parade of women dressed in nurse’s uniforms, academic robes or other professional outfits. The march was headed by Brooklyn-born Inez Milholland who, wearing a crown and a long white cape, rode an imposing white horse named “Grey Dawn” as a symbolic herald.
The New York Times called the event one of the most “impressively beautiful spectacles ever staged in this country.” Opponents thought differently. Demonstrators were heckled and attacked while the police did not intervene. A number of women ended up in hospital and because of the violence the parade had to be discontinued.
Suffrage remained a contested issue. It was not until the Nineteenth Amendment passed into law in 1920 that women were given the right to vote. Elizabeth Cady did not live long enough to see the result of her years of campaigning. She had died in October 1902.
Illustrations, from above: Anonymous, “Revolutionaries Fighting the Military, Breite Strasse, Berlin, March 1848″ (colored lithograph published by Winckelmann Verlag, Berlin); detail, map of Europe in 1848–1849 depicting the main revolutionary centers, important counter-revolutionary troop movements and states with abdications (Wikipedia, large version available here); Daguerreotype, “Barricades on rue Saint-Maur in Paris, 25 June 1848,” the first barricades ever photographed; Robert S. Duncanson, considered the first African-American artist to be internationally known, “Young America,” 1846 (Swann Auction Galleries); Detail, of photo of suffragist Aimee Hutchinson, a New York Catholic-school teacher fired for attending a 1912 suffrage parade, speaking to a crowd; Benjamin Robert Haydon’s “The Anti-Slavery Society Convention,” 1841 (National Portrait Gallery, London); and a sketch of Elizabeth Cady Stanton speaking in Seneca Falls.
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