The War That Forged a Nation: Why the Civil War Still Matters

McPherson highlights Lincoln’s profound sense of history and his understanding that the war secured the future of the democratic republic. In Lincoln’s addresses to the New Jersey legislature and at Independence Hall, he invoked the American Revolution to highlight the state of disunity that threatened the founding fathers’ vision of a society defined by equal rights to liberty and opportunity. Lincoln’s egalitarian sentiments came with the awareness that although the founding fathers’ sense of equality and liberty was abstract, they nonetheless set up a viable social and political system in which those ideals could be pursued.

Secession motivated Lincoln to ensure that the nation survived the fate of other republics. Many Northerners and some immigrants were mobilized by the conviction that democracy was at stake, but European opinion was not unanimous. Working-class, middle-class, and radical Europeans looked to American institutions as an example of how to secure rights for oppressed people, while European monarchists and conservatives hoped that the Union would fail. These conflicting opinions came about in part due to the issue of enslavement. In the early part of the war, the Union had no strong abolitionist stance, but as Northern abolitionist sentiment grew and emancipation became a part of the national strategy, Lincoln was finally able to issue the