The feeling engendered by the character of such a warfare is the
secret of the deeply seated hostility which pervades the breast of
the WESTERN American against the land of his ancestors. He never
sees the Times, and cares not a rush for the mystifications of the
Quarterly Review; but he remembers where his mother was brained, and
his father or brother tortured; aye, and by whose instrumentality
the foul deeds were mainly done. The man of the world can understand
that such atrocities may be committed, and the people of the
offending nation remain ignorant of their existence, and, in a
measure, innocent of the guilt; but the sufferer, in his provincial
practice, makes no such distinction, confounding all alike in his
resentments, and including all that bear the hated name in his
maledictions. It is a fearful thing to awaken the anger of a nation;
to excite in it a desire for revenge; and thrice is that danger
magnified, when the people thus aroused possess the activity, the
resources, the spirit, and the enterprise of the Americans. We have
been openly derided, and that recently, because, in the fulness of
our sense of power and sense of right, language that exceeds any
direct exhibition of the national strength has escaped the lips of
legislators, and, perhaps justly, has exposed them to the imputation
of boastfulness.
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