The American Civil War brought catastrophic costs to our nation and wrought serious internal changes. In addition to the staggering loss of life, the war erased billions of dollars of wealth and disrupted conventional patterns of life. However, these descriptions miss the most fundamental significance of the war - that it preserved the nation so that democracies could defend themselves against internal instability. Had the American Union failed to triumph in the war, not only would slavery have been re-instated as a labor system throughout the Western hemisphere, but democratic government would have been shown to be incapable of avoiding anarchy when a minority portion of its people decided they no longer wished to abide by its political direction and claimed a popular sovereign right to withdraw.

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