y leader. As his career is followed the presence of the
statesman grows gradually dimmer in the shadow of the successful
politician.

In the course of the three sessions of the First Congress the line was
distinctly drawn between the Federal and Republican (or Democratic)
parties. The Federalists, it was evident, had succeeded in firmly
uniting thirteen separate States into one great nation, or into what, in
due time, was sure to become a great nation. It was no longer a loose
assemblage of thirteen independent bodies, revolving, indeed, around a
central power, but with a centrifugal motion that might at any time send
them flying off into space, or destroy them by collisions at various
tangents. Those who opposed the Federalists, however, had no fear of a
tendency to tangents; the danger was, as they believed, of too much
centripetal forces and that the circling planets might fall into the
central sun and disappear altogether. Even if there were no flying off
into space, and no falling into the sun, they had no faith in this sort
of political astronomy. They were unwilling to float in fixed orbits
obedient to a supreme law other than their own.

There is no need to doubt the honesty of either party then, whatever
came to pass in later years. Nor, however, is there any more doubt now
which was the wiser. Before the end of the century the administration of
government was wrested from the hands of those who had created the
Union; and within fifteen years more the Federal party, under that name,
had disappeared. It would not be quite just to say that they were
opposed for no better reason than because they were in power. But it is
quite true that the principles and the policy of the Federalists
survived the party organization; and they not only survived, but, so far
as the opposite party was ever of service to the country, it was when
that party adopted the federal measures. It was in accordance with the
early principles of Federalism that the republic was defended and saved
in the war of 1860-65; as it was the principles of the Democratic
state-rights party, administered by a slaveholding oligarchy, that made
that war inevitable.

Hamilton said, in the well-known Carrington letter in the spring of
1792, that he was thoroughly convinced by Madison's course in the late
Congress that he, "cooperating with Mr. Jefferson, is at the head of a
faction decidedly hostile to me and my administration, and actuated by
views, in my