the Continental armies; theirs the memory of
the toil and the suffering and the splendid ultimate triumph. They
cherished in common the winged words of their statesmen, the edged deeds
of their soldiers; they yielded to the spell of mighty names which
sounded alien to all men save themselves. But though the successful
struggle had laid deep the foundations of a new nation, it had also of
necessity stirred and developed many of the traits most hostile to
assured national life. All civil wars loosen the bands of orderly
liberty, and leave in their train disorder and evil. Hence those who
cause them must rightly be held guilty of the gravest wrong-doing unless
they are not only pure of purpose, but sound of judgment, and unless the
result shows their wisdom. The Revolution had left behind it among many
men love of liberty, mingled with lofty national feeling and broad
patriotism; but to other men it seemed that the chief lessons taught had
been successful resistance to authority, jealousy of the central
Government, and intolerance of all restraint. According as one or the
other of these mutually hostile sets of sentiments prevailed, the acts
of the Revolutionary leaders were to stand justified or condemned in the
light of the coming years. As yet the success had only been in tearing
down; there remained the harder and all-important task of building up.

Task of the Nation Builders.

This task of building up was accomplished, and the acts of the men of
the Revolution were thus justified. It was the after result of the
Revolution, not the Revolution itself, which gave to the governmental
experiment inaugurated by the Second Continental Congress its unique and
lasting value. It was this result which marks most clearly the
difference between the careers of the English-speaking and
Spanish-speaking peoples on this continent. The wise statesmanship
typified by such men as Washington and Marshall, Hamilton, Jay, John
Adams, and Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, prevailed over the spirit of
separatism and anarchy. Seven years after the war ended, the
Constitution went into effect, and the United States became in truth a
nation. Had we not thus become a nation, had the separatists won the
day, and our country become the seat of various antagonistic States and
confederacies, then the Revolution by which we won liberty and
independence would have been scarcely more memorable or noteworthy than
the wars which culminated in the separat