There were features in which the
campaigns of the Mexican and South American insurgent leaders resembled
at least the partisan warfare so often waged by American Revolutionary
generals; but with the deeds of the great constructive statesman of the
United States there is nothing in the career of any Spanish-American
community to compare. It was the power to build a solid and permanent
Union, the power to construct a mighty nation out of the wreck of a
crumbling confederacy, which drew a sharp line between the Americans of
the north and the Spanish-speaking races of the south.
In their purposes and in the popular sentiment to which they have
appealed, our separatist leaders of every generation have borne an
ominous likeness to the horde of dictators and half-military,
half-political adventurers who for three quarters of a century have
wrought such harm in the lands between the Argentine and Mexico; but the
men who brought into being and preserved the Union have had no compeers
in Southern America. The North American colonies wrested their
independence from Great Britain as the colonies of South America wrested
theirs from Spain; but whereas the United States grew with giant strides
into a strong and orderly nation, Spanish America has remained split
into a dozen turbulent states, and has become a byword for anarchy and
weakness.
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