ABSTRACT
The Civil War of the early 1860's meant that America was much in the news and newspapers; by the early 1870's, the ubiquitous and brash American press itself attracted notice. It is instructive to have Arnold's Democracy, written over 15 years before, transferred from its 1861 context of state secondary schools in France and Civil War in America to the de-nationalized, political abstract of democracy associated with them both. In Democracy', Arnold enlists secondary schools and other means of support from a benevolent state in the task of preparation for the growing power in Europe' and the irresistible seduction of democratic ideas'. These dangers are fleshed out and geographically deracinated from France in Arnold's A Word about America', which belies its origins by retaining its focus on secondary schools in the US and England. Surprisingly, three years later, in 1885 Arnold recommends American government structure a federation composed of states, which powers are devolved as a model for refashioning Britain.
