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 vio lence of slavery from the early national era through the Civil War.