What makes a people a people?

[Liz Rosenthal]

I just saw this very interesting thread.

Eva, I think the question you pose is one that great political thinkers over the centuries have pondered - that is, what makes a nation? So there is no easy answer.

In the case of the U.S. Civil War, modern scholars generally believe, and I would agree, that Lincoln was not motivated by "nationalism" in striking down the rebellion. He was, instead, motivated by the abstract notion of republicanism and democracy. As of that time, the U.S. was the only country in the world experimenting with representative government. Permitting the southern states to leave and form their own country as a response to an election result that they didn't like would mean the collapse of representative government. Lincoln seems to have felt very strongly about the success of the great American experiment from the time he was a young man, not just for America's sake, but for the sake of the world. When he said in one of his early messages to Congress that the U.S. was the "last, best hope of Earth," he meant that all other nations looked to the U.S. for inspiration and evidence that they could have representative government, too.