The experiment of
the Union was as yet inchoate; its benefits were prospective; and
loyalty to it was loyalty to a splendid idea the realization of which
lay in the future rather than in the present. All honor must be awarded
to the men who under such conditions could be loyal to so high an ideal;
but we must not refuse to see the many strong and admirable qualities in
some of the men who looked less keenly into the future. It would be mere
folly [Footnote: R. T. Durrett, "Centenary of Kentucky," 64.] to judge a
man who in 1787 was lukewarm or even hostile to the Union by the same
standard we should use in testing his son's grandson a century later.
Finally, where a man's general course was one of devotion to the Union,
it is easy to forgive him some momentary lapse, due to a misconception
on his part of the real needs of the hour, or to passing but intense
irritation at some display of narrow indifference to the rights of his
section by the people of some other section. Patrick Henry himself made
one slip when he opposed the adoption of the Federal Constitution; but
this does not at all offset the services he rendered our common country
both before and afterwards.
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