It worked well enough to preserve the Union the Framers made.
Walt
"Most northern people in 1861 shared Lincoln's conviction that the fate of democratic government hung on the outcome of the Civil War. That passion sustained them through four years of the bloodiest war in the Western world between 1815 and 1914. "We must fight," insisted the Indianapolis Daily Journal on April 27,1861, two weeks after the firing on fort Sumter, "because we must. The National Government has been assailed. The Nation has been defied. If either can be done with impunity neither Nation nor Government is worth a cent. . . . War is self preservation, if our form of Government is worth preserving. If monarchy would be better, it might be wise to quit fighting, admit that a Republic is too weak to take care of itself, and invite some deposed Duke or Prince of Europe to come over here and rule us. But otherwise, we muit fight. "
None felt this sense of democratic mission more strongly than Union soldiers, who imperiled their lives for it. "I do feel that the liberty of the world is placed in our hands to defend," wrote a Massachusetts private to his wife in 1862, "and if we are overcome then farewell to freedom." In 1863, on the second anniversary of his enlistment, an Ohio private wrote in his diary that he had not expected the war to last so long, but no matter how much longer it took it must be carried on "for the great principles of liberty and self government at stake, for should we fail, the onward march of Liberty in the Old World will be retarded at least a century, and Monarchs, Kings, and Aristocrats will be more powerful against their subjects than ever."
-- BCF
Walt