To throw off the yoke of the stranger was useless
and worse than useless if we showed ourselves unable to turn to good
account the freedom we had gained. Unless we could build up a great
nation, and unless we possessed the power and self-restraint to frame an
orderly and stable government, and to live under its laws when framed,
the long years of warfare against the armies of the king were wasted and
went for naught.
At the close of the Revolution the West was seething with sedition.
There were three tasks before the Westerners; all three had to be
accomplished, under pain of utter failure. It was their duty to invade
and tame the shaggy wilderness; to drive back the Indians and their
European allies; and to erect free governments which should form parts
of the indissoluble Union. If the spirit of sedition, of lawlessness,
and of wild individualism and separatism had conquered, then our history
would merely have anticipated the dismal tale of the Spanish-American
republics.
Viewed from this standpoint the history of the West during these
eventful years has a special and peculiar interest. The inflow of the
teeming throng of settlers was the most striking feature; but it was no
more important than the half-seen struggle in which the Union party
finally triumphed over the restless strivers for disunion.
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