European writers in the 1780s praised the American Revolution and the creation of America’s Constitutional Republic as modern historical examples of human progress and the advance of human rights. These themes shaped the pro-American writings of authors who remained in Europe as well as those who crossed the Atlantic to make direct observations. Optimistic Europeans thus emphasized the emerging nation’s political progress in constructing constitutions and representative governments, social progress in fostering personal freedoms and commercial expansion, cultural progress in establishing enlightened education and religious tolerance, and moral progress in creating virtuous citizens and national leaders. But these same writers also condemned the new American nation for defending the regressive, rights-denying system of enslaved labor and for promoting new economic inequalities or consumerism. A critical narrative about the regressive, unenlightened aspects of the new society in the United States showed that European theorists understood how structural dangers threatened the new republic, even as they celebrated its revolutionary achievements. They feared that social contradictions within the new nation would undermine its political ideals and its more democratic social aspirations.