But The War and the World goes beyond traditional diplomatic history.
“The issues at stake in the Civil War, wrote Parish, found echoes in Britain and France,
Spain and Russia, Canada and Brazil, and many other lands.”
These great issues included nothing less than slavery and freedom,
democracy and privilege, self-determination and imperial ambition,
majority rule and minority rights The United States was one of the few republics in the world in 1861, and by far the largest and most important one. Most republics through history had collapsed
into tyranny or anarchy,
or had been overthrown from without. France and the republics of Latin
America provided a pointed contemporary object lesson. Would the great
American experiment of republican government and democracy also collapse Those in the Old World, wrote Parish,
who hated and feared theUnited States as the home of the demon democracy, and therefore as a dangerous example and incitement, welcomed what they took to be the total collapse of its political system in That is why Abraham Lincoln insisted that the central idea pervading this struggle is the necessity . . . of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to breakup the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves Nor was this merely an American question, Lincoln said in his first message to Congress. It embraces
more than the fate of theseUnited States. It presents to the whole family of man, the question whether a constitutional republic, or a democracy . . . can, or cannot, maintain its territorial integrity.”
2
If the Union dissolved,
the forces of conservatism inEurope would smile in satisfaction that the upstart republic of Yankee braggarts had gotten its comeuppance at last. Thus, as Parish noted, the president of the United States never doubted . . . that the conflict mattered for the whole world.”
3
Given the centrality in Parish’s book of the theme that Americas trial by battle was a test of what liberty, democracy, and power meant at different levels and in many different places this introduction to
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