james_nicoll

Speaking of which war, how did Canadians (and others of the British Empire) feel about hearing that if the US southern states were allowed to secede, all "government of the people, by the people, for the people" would "perish from the earth"?

The British Empire that ruled India with an iron fist after putting down a major colonial revolt five years before? You lot were too busy plotting to help the slavers for your own economic gain to notice.

+1

There'd just been a major wave of reaction in Europe, too.

Hm? The US gaining independence from Britain didn't exactly cause the Magna Carta to "perish from the earth." Nor would the French have restored their monarchy if the southern states had become independent.

Imo, anti-slavery was a good enough cause for the north to fight for; they didn't need to claim a threat to all democracy on the earth.

You asked about the British EMPIRE, which was not, outside one backwater island in the Atlantic and a few colonial possessions settled by the savages of said island, a democracy. Even in the parts that were democratic, it's questionable whether they were "of the people, by the people, for the people."

As for France, the Second Empire was nothing I'd call a democracy, even in the most limited Classical sense.

A claim of "of the people, by the people" arguably isn't accurate for Great Britain until the Third Reform Act extended a universal male franchise in 1884. (Never mind that both the UK and USA were lacking any form of female franchise at the time, making the claim rather weak at best even for the US.)

I'd also question whether a monarchy that grants democratic privileges to the people counts as "of the people, etc." -- I certainly doubt that's what Lincoln meant by the phrase.

I don't think that that's really been the situation since 1688. The Crown in Parliament may be the sovereign, but it's effectively Parliament with some window-dressing of the Crown - certainly by the mid-19th Century, when the sovereign's ability to choose even her Privy Council / Cabinet had been pretty much neutered.

Weren't the savages of said island also in large part the settlers of the United States?

Lincoln's primary rhetorical move there was to identify the Union cause, through opposition to slavery, with the stated ideals of the founders of the US (an identification that was neither obvious nor universally held at the time).

I don't think he was actually primarily concerned with whether or to what extent American government was unique; the point was that if the US fell apart, and in a large sense if it couldn't find a way forward without slavery, the project was failing.

He was using time-tested exceptionalist rhetoric about the US as beacon of freedom to emphasize that. This is actually a strategy that was used repeatedly, with success, in subsequent civil-rights movements. From outside the US, it seems ridiculous and hypocritical for the country to hold itself up as a standard-bearer for freedom and democracy with such a spotty record, and it creates problems for foreign policy. But inside the US, it's useful; people pushing for expansion of freedom and democracy can always bring up the same hypocrisy and demand that things change to bring us closer to the ideal.