Prior to the confederation of Canada, in which Queen Victoria took personal interest, a number of issues were of prime concern in the deliberations on the amalgamation of the four Canadian provinces into a country, most notably, the threat of invasion by the United States. It was the explicit intention of the Fathers of Confederation to unite the disparate British entities in North America into a single state under a constitutional monarchy, the men seeing that form of government as a balance between the autocracy of the Russian Empire and the popular sovereignty of the United States, the latter having just led to the American Civil War, which was seen as "the final stage in the discredit of democracy and republicanism." A Canadian crown, the Fathers thought, would ensure diversity and racial harmony in Canada, thereby strengthening its legal and cultural sovereignty, especially considering the presence of the United States and its policy of Manifest Destiny. At the 1864 Charlottetown Conference, the deligates agreed unanimously that the new federation should be a constitutional monarchy.