A REPUBLIC, IF YOU CAN KEEP IT, by Kevin Diehl

But the Americans “began their Revolution in a spirit of high adventure. They knew they were embarking on a grand experiment in self-government. That experiment remained very much in doubt during the first half of the nineteenth century, especially during the Civil War, when monarchy still dominated all of Europe. Hence we can understand the importance of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, in which he described the Civil War as a test of whether a nation conceived in liberty could long endure. This idea that republican government was a perilous experiment was part of America’s consciousness from the beginning.”

So Franklin well knew what he was saying that day outside Independence Hall. Many nations had lived and died before we began our grand experiment. The death of Rome was of particular interest. Reading about the fall of Rome from the great Latin writers of antiquity, people of the eighteenth century came to realize, Wood says, “that the Roman republic became great not simply by the force of its arms; nor was it destroyed by military might. Both Rome’s greatness and its eventual fall were caused by the character of its people.”

According to Professor Wood, “As long as the Roman people maintained their love of virtue, their simplicity and equality, their scorn of great social distinctions, and their willingness to fight for the state, they attained great heights of glory. But when they became too luxury-loving, too obsessed with refinements and social distinctions, too preoccupied with money, and too effeminate to take up arms on behalf of the state, their politics became corrupted, selfishness predominated, and the dissolution of the state had to follow. Rome fell not because of the invasions of the barbarians from without, but because of decay from within.”