On the whole, however, the story makes humiliating reading, not because the national Capital was captured almost without resistance, or because we were so frequently beaten, but because our disorganization, the incompetence of the national government, and the disloyalty of so many Americans made us deserve both a less successful war and a more humiliating peace.
The chief interest of the second English war for the purpose of this book is, however, its clear indication of the abiding-place at that time of the American national spirit.

That spirit was not found along the Atlantic coast, whose inhabitants were embittered and blinded by party and sectional prejudices.

It was resident in the newer states of the West and the Southwest.

A genuine American national democracy was coming into existence in that part of the country--a democracy which was as democratic as it knew how to be, while at the same time loyal and devoted to the national government.

The pioneers had in a measure outgrown the colonialism of the thirteen original commonwealths.