[quote=Protagonist]
What I think is a good way to think of it is like this: The people of the past were basically desperate post-apocalyptic survivors/well-intentioned extremists. There simply wasn't the resources for any reliable means of investigation, criminal records, or prisons. And, if one had grown up in an environment where roving bands of marauders could loot and pillage at will, perhaps setting up an authoritarian, imperialistic monarchy might come across as a rational, necessary course of action for the preservation of "civilization".
[/quote]

I think you're confusing mid 19th-century America with that of Dark Ages Britain, and it'd be best for you to not.

Not even the "Wild West" was as bad as the era of Atilla the Hun. Or Fallout.