Some New World Lessons for the Old World

So begins the extraordinary set of essays now known as The Federalist Papers. Even as Publius begins his address to fellow Americans, he reminds them that the world is watching. The success or failure of the American experiment in self-rule, says Publius, might well determine the fate of republican government for all humanity. In this belief Publius was hardly unique. Indeed, he notes that the importance of the American experiment for the rest of the planet "has been frequently remarked." Even in 1787, this idea was very old. We need only recall grade-school civics: the Puritans who began arriving in America in the early seventeenth century sought to establish a New England that would serve as a model not just for the Old England, but for the entire Old World. Nor was this idea limited to the generations that founded the colonies and the Constitution. Consider, for example, the words of Abraham Lincoln during the American Civil War. In his second Annual Message to Congress in 1862, Lincoln self-consciously defined the meaning of America's domestic schism in global terms: "We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. . . . We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last, best hope of earth." 2 To the same effect was his Gettysburg Address: "Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether [our] nation or any nation . . . conceived [in liberty and] dedicated [to equality] can long endure. ...