The Revolutionary struggle called out all the nobler qualities nature has bestowed on man, in those who conceived the desire and executed the determination to be free.  The heroic was most prominent:  woman seemed to forget her feebleness and timidity, and boldly to dare, and with increased fortitude to bear every danger, every misfortune, with a heroism scarcely compatible with the delicacy of her nature.  To this, or some other inexplicable cause, nature seemed to resort in preparation for coming events.  In every State there came up men, born during the war or immediately thereafter, of giant minds—­men seemingly destined to form and give direction to a new Government suited to the genius of the people and to the physical peculiarities of the country where it was to control the destinies of hundreds of millions of human beings yet unborn, and where the soil was virgin and unturned, which nature had prepared for their coming.  This required a new order of men.  These millions were to be free in the fullest sense of the word; they were only to be controlled by laws; and the making of these laws was to be their own work, and nature was responding to the exigencies of man.

The early probation of independent government taught the necessity of national concentration as to the great features of government, at the same time demonstrating the importance of keeping the minor powers of government confined to the authority of the States.  In the assembling of a convention for this purpose, which grew out of the free action of the people of each State, uninfluenced by law or precedent, we see congregated a body of men combining more talent, more wisdom, and more individuality of character than perhaps was ever aggregated in any other public body ever assembled.  From this convention of sages emanated the Constitution of the United States; and most of those constituting this body reassembled in the first Congress, which sat as the supreme power in the United States.  It was these men and their coadjutors who inaugurated and gave direction to the new Government.  Under its operations, the human mind and human soul seemed to expand and to compass a grasp it had scarcely known before.  There were universal content and universal harmony.  The laws were everywhere respected, and everywhere enforced.  The freedom of thought, and the liberty of action unrestrained, stimulated an ambition in every man to discharge his duties faithfully to the Government, and honestly in all social relations.  There was universal security to person and property, because every law-breaker was deemed a public enemy, and not only received the law’s condemnation, but the public scorn.  Under such a Government the rapid accumulation of wealth and population was a natural consequence.  The history of the world furnishes no example comparable with the progress of the United States to national greatness.  The civilized world appeared to feel the influence of her example and to start anew in the rivalry of greatness.