Radicalchic pretends she is a Republican in the tradition of Lincoln. But her friends love to wave Confederate flags. Lincoln was the greatest Republican President, a leader who led all those who defeated the pro-slavery Confederate rebellion and saved the Union. Not that Lincoln wanted a civil war, mind you.
When developing forces of history can’t be held back, bottled up, the result is often bloody Civil War or Revolution. Not every Revolution succeeds, either. Those that do succeed often do so only in fits and starts, in stages, with reverses (and excesses too).
Such certainly was the American Revolution, its famous first stage a lasting political success establishing a Republic. Its second stage was precisely the Civil War which was destined to end slavery — except that the newly freed black slaves were soon abandoned to the tender mercies of racist Jim Crow. The first stage of the American Revolution involved defeating a foreign Royal Army and its mercenaries, and the merchant and plantation colonial leaders even had friends in the British Parliament (the English had already had their own bloody revolutions!)
The French Revolution had a far more difficult task, since all at once it had to fight centuries of entrenched aristocratic power and privilege, a corrupt Catholic Church still with support especially in the provinces, and invasion by reactionary foreign monarchs from all over Europe. Enthusiasm in Paris easily turned to paranoia as the different social elements involved in the Revolution divided. Excesses there certainly were, but most of the feudal and aristocratic forces were swept away. In defeat the Revolution rallied around a strong leader, Napoleon, who accommodated to the Catholic Church and led a new French national army to “glory” and final defeat.