Page:The Civil War in America - an address read at the last meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society.djvu/70

64 turned many hearts away from the Federal cause. The habit of swagger sensibly diminished as the stern struggle went on. Before, America had no history: her cravings for one were visible in the anxiety with which the most equivocal monuments of antiquity were preserved. Now she has a history which even the war powers of the Old World must respect and acknowledge as a title to the fellowship of great nations. True independence has been achieved, and the same slavish homage will no longer be paid, under the mask of ostentatious disdain, to the ideas and influences of the Old World. A manlier tone begins to pervade public and private life. Types of genuine worth have superseded empty demagogism in the allegiance of the national heart. The excess of the democratic spirit has been corrected by military discipline; and the moral courage of rulers, and their firmness in the exercise of lawful authority, have increased. Patriotism has been stimulated so much, that a nationality too intense and narrow, too like that which incessant wars have engendered in European communities, is the thing at present to be feared. Soon the fruits of quickened intellect, as well as those of regenerated character may begin to appear. Soon we may see in America something like that burst of mental life which has followed and rewarded great moral struggles in the case of other nations: which followed and rewarded the struggle of Athens against the Persians: the struggle of Elizabethan England against Philip II. Already, indeed, the political intellect of the people has been elevated and ennobled by the practical discussion of the grandest questions on which political intellect can be engaged; and of this high training there is more, perhaps there is only too much, yet to come.