2 of 12
Beyond the killing and destruction, the Civil War was also about transformative achievements and consequences that forever altered the landscape of American politics and society. At its heart, the Civil War was all about nationalism, and whose nationalism would prevail. Would there be two nations, each a republic, or one union? Neither side was wrong in this aspect of the conflict, but only one side would prevail.
The victor's identity, however, would determine far more than political boundaries. With Northern victory, three consequences for the nation and the world were especially momentous: the destruction of slavery, the elimination of secession as a sectional option, and the central place of the war in nineteenth-century world history. Of the three, universal emancipation looms largest. The liberation of four million enslaved Americans of color is surely the most courageous and praiseworthy—if initially unintended—consequence of the war. Lincoln was cautious on abolition and eventually turned emancipationist largely as a "war measure" to promote a Northern victory. What began as Abraham Lincoln's limited Emancipation Proclamation grew by war's end to a Constitutional amendment forever outlawing the institution from American soil. Whatever Lincoln's motives in issuing his proclamation—and they were mixed—the long-term effect was liberation for millions of innocents who had suffered for centuries in a holocaust of their own.
The second great consequence of the Civil War was the assertion of rule by law and the end of secessionist ideology. Democracies have profound difficulty with the issue of secession. While "liberal" democratic theorists address almost every conceivable dimension of freedom, individual rights, and the protection of minority groups, the question of secession hardly ever comes up. In fact, as ethicist Allen Buchanan points out, it is one of the greater ironies of liberal thought that in all the trumpeting of individual rights, the individual's most basic right of all—to join or not to join or to secede—is rarely addressed.3 The consequences are too threatening. Did Norway have a right to secede from Sweden? Does Quebec have a right to secede from Canada? Ultimately, secession is a moral question without a formula to discover a definitive moral answer. Did the South have a right to secede? Yes and no. Only a civil war would settle the issue once and for all. Whatever else the defeated Confederacy may have retained after defeat and reunion, they never again mounted a serious cry for secession. Nor has anyone else.
Outside of its effects on American society, the Civil War had international ramifications that we parochial American historians have been slow to pick up on but which cannot be gainsaid. In international terms, the Civil War represented a compelling example to the world that a liberal, democratic nationalism could endure as effectively as divine right monarchies or despotic tyrannies. And this, at a time when liberalism and democracy were not the presumed choice of Western society that they are today. The American Revolution proved a free people could revolt. But it could not prove they could hold together. Only time and severe internal challenge could demonstrate the immutability of a democratic revolution. That required a second revolution—a civil war.4
share this page
RSS Feed
