On the other hand,
the people of the long-settled country found difficulty in heartily
accepting the idea that the new communities, as they sprang up in the
forest, were entitled to stand exactly on a level with the old, not only
as regards their own rights, but as regards the right to shape the
destiny of the Union itself.
The Union still Inchoate.
The Union was as yet imperfect. The jangling colonies had been welded
together, after a fashion, in the slow fire of the Revolutionary war;
but the old lines of cleavage were still distinctly marked. The great
struggle had been of incalculable benefit to all Americans. Under its
stress they had begun to develop a national type of thought and
character. Americans now held in common memories which they shared with
no one else; for they held ever in mind the feats of a dozen crowded
years. Theirs was the history of all that had been done by the
Continental Congress and 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.
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