The Dangers of Democracy

In 1860 the United States gave the international community an object lesson in the dangers of democracy. At the time, most of the major nations of the world were governed by hereditary monarchies, mixed monarchies or aristocracies. The vast majority of people resident in those countries had no direct say in the selection of those who governed or the policies they pursued, which made the people "subjects" rather than "citizens". What influence the people came from the fact of their numbers and the threat posed to civil order by mob action.

The United States was alone among major nations in that the national sovereignty was vested in the people – not all of the people, but a large number of them compared to other nations. In 1860 the United States essentially all white male adults had the right to vote, and the government was made up of elected representatives and officials chosen by elected representatives. (While the United States had universal male white suffrage, Britain's Reform Act of 1832 increased the electorate to about seven percent of the adult male population.)

Those who doubted the inherent stability of a government based upon any kind of universal suffrage – "mob" rule – were vindicated by the events of 1860. At the start of that year the United States was a vast nation that stretched from coast to coast across the middle section of North America. The strains in the body politic became cracks and fissures with the approach of the state and national elections in the autumn to choose all the members of the national House of Representatives, the members of the electoral college who would select the president and vice president and the members of the state legislatures who would select one third of the members of the national Senate.

The disintegration of the United States started immediately after the election results were known. Whereas in November there was only one great republic in the world based upon democratic principles, in February 1861 there were two, and by April of that same year those two great republics were at war with one another.