That the first attempt to come into a union could have been
a success, that a sacrifice to the god Provincialism could have been
avoided, seems in retrospect impossible.
This period of fear of centralisation, which began even before the
close of the Revolutionary War, a time of mutual distrust, of paramount
individualism, is little known and rarely dwelt upon at present. Perhaps
the omission is due to a happy nature, which recalls only the pleasant
events of the past. The school-texts dismiss it with a few paragraphs;
statesmen rarely turn to its valuable lessons of experience; and to
the larger number of the American people, the statement that we have
lived since our independence under a national frame of government other
than the Constitution is a matter of surprise. A writer of fiction
somewhere describes two maiden sisters, one of whom had a happy and
the other a melancholy disposition. In recalling the family history,
one could remember all the marriages and the other all the deaths. To
recall only national successes is undoubtedly most pleasant; but
posterity sitting ever at the feet of History gains a more valuable
lesson by including the failures of the past.
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