of human nature, and the true end of all human
existence, could have overcome,--difficulties which, with all the
cultivation of their past, rendered their task not less arduous than
that of the founders of any community recorded in history even among the
rudest and most savage of peoples. And for all their energy and
perseverance the world has not yet given them the credit which is their
due, although the yearly developing results of their labors are
gradually restoring them to their proper position in the appreciation of
humanity. And the time will come when their memory will be cherished all
over the earth as that of the greatest benefactors of the human kind. As
the Alpine glacier year after year heaves out to its surface the bodies
of those who many decades ago were buried beneath the everlasting snows,
so time in its revolutions heaves up to the view of the world, one by
one, the great facts of the buried past, to be carefully laid away in
the graveyard of memory, with a towering monument above them to mark to
all succeeding ages the spot where they have wrought in the interest of
humanity.

Another evil effect of this same foreign view is to lead the world to
expect of us, the descendants of an old and polished civilization, more
than is warranted by the facts of our history or even by the
capabilities of human nature in its present stage. And this, too, arises
from a false estimate of the difficulties which have beset us on every
side, and from the paucity of the world's experience, and consequent
knowledge, of such experiments as our own. The march of human
advancement has but just begun in this its new path; and it is but
little wonder that, excited by our past successes, and stimulated to an
inordinate degree as their ideas of progress have become through the new
truths which our efforts have brought to light, the friends of human
freedom all over the world should expect from us more astonishing
developments, more rapid progress, than is compatible with the frailties
and fallibilities of our humanity. Hence in the light of this morbid
view our greatest successes are looked upon as somewhat below the
standard which our advantages demand.

With the foreign view we, as a nation, have nothing to do. We must be
content to act entirely independently of the opinions of the outside
world, being only careful steadfastly to pursue the path of right,
leaving to future ages to vindicate our ideas and our motives. So onl