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