Mazzini, Slavery, and the American Civil War: Transnational Perspectives on Republicanism, Nationalism, and Emancipation

Hailed by his contemporaries as “the apostle of nationalities”, Giuseppe Mazzini believed that national self-determination was the indispensable basis for the creation of a truly democratic form of government. In particular, Mazzini thought that the creation of republican nations such as the United States was the only way to ensure the people’s rule. This paper intends to look at Mazzini’s changing idea of American republicanism with specific regard to his antislavery convictions. Utilizing a transnational approach, I intend to argue that the American Civil War represented a “transformational crisis” in the way Mazzini viewed republicanism in the United States, and that his long-standing abolitionist activity – which had been instrumental in generating a mutual friendship with William Lloyd Garrison – played a crucial role in his resolution of this crisis. In fact, when the American Civil War begun, Mazzini was initially torn in his sympathies between the Union, which under Abraham Lincoln’s guidance represented the very embodiment of the legacy of American republicanism, and the Confederacy, which claimed to struggle for the same principle of national self-determination that Mazzini had sworn to defend and support. In the end, it was Mazzini’s deep-seated hatred of slavery that led him to embrace the Union’s cause, even though with reservations about Lincoln’s initially timid antislavery policy. Subsequently, the release of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1^st January, 1863, removed all doubts from Mazzini, who rushed to praise Lincoln as a “benefactor of mankind”. Mazzini, thus, became convinced, once and for all, that the United States was the model republican nation to imitate, since the stain of slavery had finally disappeared from American republicanism. As he argued in 1865, the United Stated could now lead the world in the creation of republican nations with truly democratic forms of government.