ABSTRACT
Literate Americans paid close attention to the views of European critics, most of whom were British. Americans' attention to the views of foreign travelers points to the oversized influence of travel to mold public opinion. The popularity of European travel underscores Americans' powerful sense of connection to European civilization in the post-revolutionary decades. Southerners were as engaged as other Americans in the transatlantic literary marketplace. They became increasingly intolerant toward criticisms of slavery, especially in the South itself, but southerners did not wall themselves off from contemporary intellectual currents to protect themselves from antislavery sentiment. Racism pervaded white society in both the North and South, but as an intellectual construct racism stemmed from a vigorous international conversation between racial theorists and other authorities across the western world. Until very recently, the antebellum period would have seemed to be a singularly unpromising one to look for global influences upon American culture.
