We can potentially say that in hindsight but politicians at the time could not come to that conclusion. After 80+ years the US was still the only major democra

We can potentially say that in hindsight but politicians at the time could not come to that conclusion. After 80+ years the US was still the only major democracy and it was teetering. Unionist politicians, embodied by Lincoln, were afraid that letting the US fall apart would deal a blow to democracy everywhere. Lincoln so eloquently voices this concern in the Gettysburg Address. Historian Joseph Ellis said (I think in his book "Founding Brothers") that we now take democracy as the inevitable conclusion of liberalizing politics but that formed only after the US Civil War. (This also doesn't address the moral horror of allowing slavery to continue for who knows how many years in the Confederacy.)