The British Empire left behind 70 English-speaking states, all democracies, all with common political traditions. They should be united again globally in a union of states.The American Congress has the power to admit new states. A united states of the world is possible with these states and any other states willing to join the union.
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
World Unity 32
On July 4th 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, both John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson of Virginia died. The two had worked together during the rebellion to keep their colonies and the other colonies united against Britain. They both served as president of the United States and kept up a friendly relationship with one another communicating by letter until their deaths the same day. In 1826, 24 states were in the union. For historians of the period from 1814 to 1861 when the Civil War began, the union’s extraordinary and rapid growth should have been their main theme, but instead they focus on a trend they discovered in the union towards nationalism and contrast this with what they call sectionalism. A union of 24 states stretched out over a continent the size of Europe, each with sovereign powers, would naturally be expected to have separatist tendencies but none of any importance emerged. New England was a strong and prosperous area with a Protestant body of English-speaking people and a cultural unity based on 200 years of common history. But New England considered secession from the union and then rejected it. Historians however seize its tendency towards secession as a strong example of sectionalism. Virginia is cited as sectionalist because it considered itself a sovereign state and opposed decisions of the Supreme Court that reduced its sovereignty. The Supreme Court held that the states had not full but limited sovereignty and the court’s increase of power is cited by historians as the correct tendency of the union, one towards nationalism. But the actions of both New England, the home of Adams, and Virginia, the home of Jefferson, both give evidence of the firm sense of sovereignty that was powerfully alive in the states before the Civil War. And there were now 24 of them. Both Adams of Massachusetts and Jefferson of Virginia would have been shocked to learn that the revolutionary democratic union that they had helped create was somehow transforming itself, according to historians, from a union to a nation-state. What could motivate historians to tell the story of a rise of national power in the government in Washington D.C., which was neither fully sovereign nor a state, rather than the extraordinary birth of 24 free democratic states all with the same degree of sovereign power as that exhibited by the New England states and Virginia? The answer is that historians write with a view ahead to what will happen on April 6 1861, the start of a civil war between two groups of states. Historians must show somehow, even though the actual history of the period does not show it, that seeds of division between sections of the union were developing that inevitably would burst forth into civil war. In reality, the union was sound and developing magnificently. There were sectional tensions in the union but the union was not the problem. The union did not cause the Civil War. One politician, Abraham Lincoln, caused it. Lincoln was the problem.
DanielMcNeill amazon.com/author/graceisall
usoftheworld.com
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