Chapter 12.                                  (continued) 

   

                                   Photo of the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, early July, 1863

In the United States, the idealism of the American version of the Romantic revolt attempted to integrate the Enlightenment ideals of reason and order and the superiority of these Western ways with Romantic ideals that re-asserted the value of the individual. This produced painful excesses: genocide of the native people, enslavement of millions of Africans, and, one of history’s worst horrors, the US Civil War.

America had to undergo some difficult adjustments before it began to integrate the Christian belief in the worth of every individual with the respect for the law that enables individuals to live together in peace. But the slaves were freed, and the government began to compensate the native tribes (with reserves of land and with cash) and take them into the American mainstream (with opportunities for Western-style educations), or rather, to be more accurate, Americans began moving toward these ideals with more determination, and they continue to do so into this era, as do all modern states.

Thus, in the larger picture of all of these events, the upheaval called the Romantic Age imprinted into the Western value system a deeper respect for the ways of compromise, which resulted in the institutions of modern, representative democracy. These guided people toward balance and kept their various countries from devolving into chaos. Democracy was, and is, our best hope for creating institutions by which people use reason and debate instead of war to find a balance in each generation between the security-loving conservatism of the establishment and the passions of the reformers.