Aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 

                                     (credit: Timothy H. O'Sullivan, via Wikimedia Commons)

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

The example of the indigenous peoples of the "New World" and how they were viewed by Europeans is an instructive one. For the Enlightenment thinkers, Europeans were clearly living in superior societies and were bringing civilization to the other "races" of the world. Therefore, some short-term excesses by European traders or priests or armies could be overlooked. The long-term effect would be for these "primitive" peoples' benefit. That made it all okay. 


                      

            Stu-mick-o-sucks, Blood tribe chief (credit: George Catlin, via Wikimedia Commons)


For Romantic thinkers (Rousseau is famous for this one), the indigenous peoples of the "New World" were "noble savages" morally superior to the Europeans who were exploiting them. Europeans should be seeking to live more like them, close to nature, not try to make them more like Europeans. Both of these views were extremes that lacked nuance and solid commitment to looking at evidence in the real world. Neither had followers that eased the interfacing of the two cultures much at all. 

For example, the indigenous peoples needed access to vaccines long before they began to get them. European-based diseases were ravaging their tribes, sometimes killing over 90% in a generation. Smallpox, in particular, was preventable by vaccine from the early 1800's on, but epidemics continued to occur long after the vaccine had been discovered. 

On the other hand, as we are finding out now, the indigenous people by and large understood the basic ideas of ecology long before any Europeans began to understand them. If we kill off the birds of prey in an area, for example, the rodent populations will rise drastically. The wolf keeps the caribou strong, by killing off the weak and sick, allowing only the fit to breed. In other words, this was an area in which the indigenous people's wisdom might have helped European farmers and ranchers if they had been willing to listen.  

The sensible view would have told us that each society had things to learn from the other. That would be the moral realist view. But if it is any consolation, we are beginning to see now that every society that has made it this far in human history has valuable parts in its cultural code, parts that other societies may learn about and profit by.   

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 and take them into the American mainstream, or rather, to be more accurate, America began moving toward these more balanced ideals with more determination, and she continues to do so into this era, as do all modern states.

Thus, in the larger picture of all these events, the upheaval called the Romantic Age imprinted into the Western value system a deeper respect for the ways of balance and compromise. The result was modern, representative democracy. Its values guide people toward balance between progress and order and keep democratic 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 an updated balance in each generation between the security-loving conservatism of the establishment and the passions of the reformers.