[Pamphlets. American history]

18
tion will command the sympathy of ages, is the unsuspected disinterestedness of its military leaders, and the
patriotic spirit of its armies. Marathon itself sheds no
glory on the dishonored end of Miltiades and Themistocles. If the patriots of'75 could have been plausibly
suspected of selfish motives; if it could have been insinuated with any show of reason, that Washington was
ambitious of commanding an army, that the Franklins
and Adamses, the Henrys and the Jeffersons were actuated by a craving for the honors and emoluments to be
expected under the new government, I hesitate not to
say that the taint of selfishness would have poisoned the
revolution. It would have stripped it not merely of its
moral grandeur and beauty, but of its political power.
But Dr Johnson's notion, that it might be the purpose
of the Congress at Philadelphia, " to encircle with a diadem the brows of Mr Cushing," scarcely moves a smile.
Such a suggestion as that Warren, and Putnam, and
Prescott were carried to the summit of yonder hill by
the hope of military advancement, or the prospect of the
spoils of profitable war, would be regarded less as a calumny than as an absurdity. No one would stoop to refute it. It would make as deep an impression on their
pure fame, as the breath of a summer evening makes
upon the eternal granite which commemorates their patriotism.
If the leaders of the revolution were free from the military passion, not less was this the case with the mass of
the people. Events had made them familiar with the efforts, the exposures, and the vicissitudes of war,-and, as