made; and that supreme power must be lodged somewhere
to regulate and govern the general concerns of the Confederate Republic,
without which the Union would not be of long duration. And he urged that
happiness would be ours if we seized the occasion and made it our own.
In this, one of the very greatest acts of Washington, was revealed the
heart of the man, the spirit of the hero, the wisdom of the sage--I
might almost say the sacred inspiration of the prophet.

But still the wing of the eagle drooped; the gathering storms baffled
his sunward flight. Even with Washington in the van, the column wavered
and halted--states straggling to the rear that had hitherto been
foremost for permanent union, under an efficacious constitution. And
while three years rolled by amidst the jargon of sectional and local
contentions, "the half-starved government," as Washington depicted it,
"limped along on crutches, tottering at every step." And while
monarchical Europe with saturnine face declared that the American hope
of union was the wild and visionary notion of romance, and predicted
that we would be to the end of time a disunited people, suspicious and
distrustful of each other, divided and subdivided into petty
commonwealths and principalities, lo! the very earth yawned under the
feet of America, and in that very region whence had come forth a
glorious band of orators, statesmen and soldiers to plead the cause and
fight the battles of Independence--lo! the volcanic fires of rebellion
burst forth upon the heads of the faithful, and the militia were
leveling the guns of the Revolution, against the breasts of their
brethren. "What, gracious God! is man?" Washington exclaimed: "It was
but the other day that we were shedding our blood to obtain the
constitutions under which we live, and now we are unsheathing our swords
to overturn them."

But see! there is a ray of hope. Maryland and Virginia had already
entered into a commercial treaty for regulating the navigation of the
rivers and great bay in which they had common interests, and Washington
had been one of the commissioners in its negotiation. And now, at the
suggestion of Maryland, Virginia had called on all the states to meet in
convention at Annapolis, to adopt commercial regulations for the whole
country. Could this foundation be laid, the eyes of the nation-builders
foresaw that the permanent structure would ere long rise upon it. But
when the day of meeting came no state nort