The pre-revolutionists are the Titans of human history; the
revolutionists proper are only heroes; and the
post-revolutionists are too frequently dwarfs and weaklings.
This signifies that civilization advances by revolutionary
stages, and that history sends out her tallest and best sons to
explore the line of march, and to select the spot for the next
camping-ground. It is not they who actually command the
oncoming columns and who seem so huge against the historical
background--it is not these, but rather the hoarse forerunners
and shaggy prophets of progress who are the real kings of men--
the true princes of the human empire.

These principles of the civilized life were strongly illustrated
in our War of Independence. The forerunners of that war were a
race of giants. Their like has hardly been seen in any other
epoch of that sublime scrimmage called history. Five or six
names may be selected from the list of the early American
prophets whose deeds and outcry, if reduced to hexameters, would
be not the Iliad, not the Jerusalem Delivered, but the Epic of
Human Liberty.

The greatest of these, our protagonists of freedom, was Benjamin
Franklin. After him it were difficult to name the second. It is
always difficult to find the second man; for there are several
who come after. In the case of our forerunners the second may
have been Thomas Jefferson; it may have been Samuel Adams; it may
have been his cousin; it may have been Thomas Paine; it may have
been Patrick Henry; it may have been James Otis, the subject of
this monograph.