The contemporary international context of the American Civil War is, as readers may have noticed, a major part of my research these days.
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It's easy to lose sight of how much of a liberal, democratic, republican (in the small-l/d/r sense) outlier the USA still was in 1861. Even the British, with a 2-party parliamentary system that was rapidly consuming the last remains of monarchical power, saw us that way.
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Americans did not invent democracy or republican self-government. But both the Founding generation & Lincoln's generation were painfully aware that previous efforts had always come to grief. Really only after the Civil War did the world accept that the American experiment worked.
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Of course, no sooner did critics of American democracy move on from "democracy is too revolutionary, doesn't work, people need a king," they started in on "democracy's day is over, modern people need 'Economic Democracy' (Communism), government by Experts, or Fascism."
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Even the Founding Fathers were skeptical that people could govern themselves, but instead of giving up, they set to work carefully designing a system to require popular self-government to be deliberative, protect the rights of the minority, & privilege fundamental rights.
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Dan you should make the journey to New Orleans to visit the National WWII Museum. It started out as the D-Day Museum but grew. One of the themes of both Germany and Japan was the time of democracy is over.
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