on will
be regarded both by the present and future generations; opposite both in
respect to the views they give of American society and the judgment to
be formed thereon: so opposing, in fact, that they must ever give rise
to conflicting opinions, which can only be reconciled in individual
instances by the actual occurrence of great events, and never when
dealing with generalities. These two far distant points of view are the
foreign and the native. We are, more perhaps than any other nation in
existence, a peculiar people. Our institutions are new and in most
respects original, and cannot be judged by the experience of other
nations. Our manner of life and modes of thought--all our ideas of
individual and national progress, are _sui generis_, and our experience,
both social and political, as based upon those ideas, has been similar
to that of no other race which history records. Hence to the foreign
historian or philosopher our inner life is a sealed book; he can neither
understand the hidden springs of action which govern all the movements
of our body politic, nor appreciate the motives or the aspirations of
the American mind: in a word, he can never be imbued with the _spirit_
of our intellectual and moral life, which alone can give the key-note to
prophecy, the pitch and tone to true and impartial history. And he who,
reasoning from the few _a priori_ truths of human nature, or from those
characteristics which the American mind possesses in common with that of
the Old World, shall pretend to treat of our systems and our
intellectual life, or to map out our future destiny, will be as much at
fault as the historian of a thousand years ago who should attempt to
portray the events of this our day and generation. The historian of
American civilization must not only be among us, but _of_ us--one who is
able not only to identify his material interests with those of the great
American people, but also to partake of our moral habitudes, to be
actuated by the same feelings, desires, aspirations, and be governed by
the same motives. By such an one alone, who is able to understand our
moral life in all its phases and bearings, can a clear and truthful view
be taken of the great events which are continually agitating our
society, and their bearings upon our present and future civilization be
correctly estimated.

It is precisely from lack of this sympathy and of appreciation of the
difficulties under which we have labored, that