A significance far beyond our borders

I recently finished The Last Full Measure by Jeff Shaara, a historical fiction about the thoughts and decisions of commanders in the Civil War. While I found parts of this particular book in the trilogy a little preachy, it and the series as a whole are a pretty good read if you are interested in an author's well-researched portrayal of what was going on in the minds of some of the key generals during the war. The reason I am bringing up this novel is because of a particular conversation in it between General Grant and President Lincoln that caught my eye, in which Shaara notes a long-term ramification of the war that had never really occurred to me. Here's a portion of that conversation with some sentences abridged (for brevity and copyright reasons), although I highly recommend reading the conversation in it's entirety if any of you would like to borrow my copy of the book someday:

(Lincoln): The Constitution, this new idea, has been around for less than a century. (to Grant): I also have no doubt that you are aware that if we do not win this war - if we do not show the world that this system can work, that we can build a nation and manage our affairs from the power of an idea written on a piece of paper - then that idea will die out... History will record that the idea did not work, that our piece of paper did not carry the power of a monarchy... There is a significance to this [war] that goes beyond our borders, and far beyond our time...

I have known the short and long term ramifications of the American Civil War for a long time now, yet this particular long term consequence has never really dawned on me until now, at least not fully. The Civil War is important in American history for centralizing national power over the states, ending slavery, and modernizing the nation industrially and technologically. Yet it also plays a significant symbolic importance in world history, as well. If we place ourselves in 1863-64, the Constitution begins to look something like rock and roll in 1960 - an interesting idea for awhile, but starting to flicker out. Nobody outside of America thought during the first half of the 19th century that the U.S. would last, and the Civil War was beginning to look like that prediction finally coming to fruition.

Of course the Union finally won in 1865. But world history could have been quite different if American democracy and Constitutionalism had succumbed to a significant flaw in its early years, namely its weak national government that struggled to maintain cohesion between the various states. It is unlikely that as many nations, if any at all, would have used our system as a template for government, particularly if they also considered South America's failure to unify under a single constitution in the 1830s as well as the nightmare of the French Republic. England, while somewhat of a republic at the time, was still ultimately ruled by a monarch and could very well have convinced itself to keep that unifying figure after witnessing America's failure. The list goes on (the Iraq War and the effort to "spread democracy", if you want a recent event). If we consider the fact that new nations tend to shy away from previously failed systems, the idea seems very plausible to me (it may still be too recent to tell yet, but how many nations turned to communism when the Soviet Union and China began showing signs of significant problems during the 1970s and 80s?)

I don't mean this idea to get too exaggerated and tread into the area of "What If" history, and without the North losing the Civil War it is really impossible to say with any certainty what could have happened. However, what is fairly certain is that the preservation of the Union was a significant step in paving the way to where we are historically today, both in terms of the U.S.'s steady rise to playing a larger role in foreign affairs as well as its influence and success in implementing its goals internationally. The North alone may have still eventually joined in international politics, however it would have done so riding not on the strength of a proven system, but on an image of failure and weakness.