The Union had been wrought by virtue of vigorous, responsible, and enterprising leadership, and of sound and consistent political thinking.

It was to be perpetuated by a company of men, who disbelieved in enterprising and responsible leadership, and who had abandoned and tended to disparage anything but the most routine political ideas.

The American people, after passing through a period of positive achievement, distinguished in all history for the powerful application of brains to the solution of an organic political problem--the American people, after this almost unprecedented exhibition of good-will and good judgment, proceeded to put a wholly false interpretation on their remarkable triumph.

They proceeded, also, to cultivate a state of mind which has kept them peculiarly liable to intellectual ineptitude and conformity.

The mixture of optimism, conservatism, and superficiality, which has until recently characterized their political point of view, has made them almost blind to the true lessons of their own national experience.
The best that can be said on behalf of this traditional American system of political ideas is that it contained the germ of better things.