ging armies to rid the earth of their
presence.

That, too, was fated and necessary, and a part of the predestined
programme. The nation could not progress with this corrupting monster in
its pathway; and the battle between them has not come an hour too soon.
The monster must be exterminated, and that, too, without mercy and
without compassion, as the sworn and implacable enemy both of God and
man. Otherwise this glorious country, which has so long worn the garland
and surging robe of liberty, will become a dungeon of desolation from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, resounding only with the shrieks of
mandrakes and the clank of chains.

This obstruction removed, there is, as we said above, no height of
greatness which the American people may not reach. Then, and then only,
shall we begin to consolidate ourselves into a nation, with a distinct
organon of principles, feelings, and loyalties, to which the mighty
heart and brain of the people shall throb and vibrate in pulsations of
sublime unity. At present we are only a people in the making, and very
few there are calling themselves Americans who have any idea of what
America is and means in relation to history. By and by we shall all
apprehend the riddle more wisely, and be more worthy of the great name
we bear.

In the meanwhile it is no marvel that we are not a homogeneous people.
Our time has not come for that, and may yet lie afar off in the shadowy
centuries. Consider how and through what alien sources we have
multiplied the original population of the associated colonies as they
existed when our fathers raised them to a nationality. There is not a
nation in all Europe, to say nothing of Asia and the islands, which is
not represented in our blood and does not form a part of our lineage. It
is true that the old type predominates, and that we have the virtues and
the vices of the Anglo-Saxons in us; but we are far too individual at
present, Celt and Dane and Spaniard and Teuton, and all the rest of our
motley humanities, will have to be fused into one great Anglo-American
race, before we can call ourselves a distinct nation. It took England
many centuries to accomplish this work, and fashion herself into the
plastic form and comeliness of her present unity and proportion. We, who
work at high pressure and make haste in our begettings and growth, can
scarcely hope to make a national sculpture at all commensurate with the
genius of the people and the continent, in one or