The wisest and coolest leaders saw that the matter could never be determined on a mere consideration of the abstract rights, or even of the equities, of the case.

They saw that it would have to be decided, as almost all political questions of great importance must be decided, by compromise and concession.

The foremost statesmen of the Revolution were eminently practical politicians.

They had high ideals, and they strove to realize them, as near as might be; otherwise they would have been neither patriots nor statesmen.

But they were not theorists.