Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination During the Civil War Era...

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Alys D. Beverton

Exceptionalism in Crisis

Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination During the Civil War Era

Alys D. Beverton

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English

The University of North Carolina Press
30 April 2025

History of the Americas; American Civil War

Series: Civil War America

Before 1861, US Americans could confidently claim to belong to the New World's ""exceptional"" republic, unlike other self-governing nations in the Western Hemisphere such as Mexico, which struggled with political violence and unrest. Americans used such comparisons to show themselves and the world that democracy in the United States was working as designed.

The outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 exploded this illusion by showing that the United States was in fact not immune to domestic political instability. Joining a growing community of historians who study the war in a global context, Alys D. Beverton examines Mexico's place in the US imagination during the Civil War and postbellum period. Beverton reveals how pro- and antiwar Confederates and Unionists alike used Mexico's long history of political strife to alternately justify and oppose the Civil War and, after 1865, various policies aimed at reuniting the states. All used Mexico as a cautionary tale of how easily a nation could slip into anarchy in the tumultuous nineteenth century, even the so-called exceptional United States.

By: Alys D. Beverton
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 25mm, Spine: 155mm
Weight: 435g
ISBN: 9781469685212
ISBN 10: 1469685213
Series: Civil War America
Pages: 308
Publication Date: 30 April 2025
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Alys D. Beverton is senior lecturer in American history at Oxford Brookes University.

Reviews for Exceptionalism in Crisis: Faction, Anarchy, and Mexico in the US Imagination During the Civil War Era

""Exceptionalism in Crisis masterfully demonstrates that citizens of the United States developed their understanding of republican nationalism through engagement with the outside world. Alys Beverton's deep research into nineteenth-century print culture reveals that Americans in the United States constructed a unique national identity by comparing the progress of their republican experiment with that of Mexico. The American Civil War shattered assumptions of superiority in the USA. by suggesting that the United States and Mexico might share as many similarities as differences. Beverton's work reminds us that . . . the potential fragility of democratic governments has troubled American political thinkers since at least the 1860s.""--Andre M. Fleche, author of The Revolution of 1861: The American Civil War in the Age of Nationalist Conflict