That's an excellent summary and linkage of international events in the 1860’s that I knew very little about.
Always exciting, even in my old age, to suddenly have a more coherent understanding of a historical period.
A while back someone at Free Republic - perhaps you - posted a long essay on the regional events surrounding the Armenian genocide during World War One.
That had the same impact on me, when a dozen things I knew in isolation suddenly combined into a clear and coherent image.
The US has always been a small percentage of the world population, so we forget how influential the US has been.
The shot at the Concord Bridge truly was “the shot heard round the world.” The US victory in the War of 1812 over the British Empire was similarly decisive. The US Civil War seemed at the time as if it could have meant the end of republican government.
The US made the difference in two world wars and a cold war in the 20th century. Today, the US leads the war on Islamic terror.
H. L. Mencken wrote, “The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history...the highest emotion reduced to a few poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous. But let us not forget that it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination—that government of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”