Page:Margaret Fuller Ossoli (Higginson).djvu/33

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HEREDITARY TRAITS.
15

which the Federalists mistakenly apologized; and if he was so hopeful as to assert, without qualification, “None but just wars can ever be waged by a free country,” we can pardon something to republican zeal. Like other Americans in that day, he found a hero in Bolivar; and he held up Napoleon Bonaparte with some vigor as a warning to that popular leader: —

“Should Bolivar, so much admired, so much applauded, so often dignified by a comparison with the highest name in the annals of patriotism, degenerate at last into a vulgar hero, a military usurper, the betrayer of his country; great indeed will be his degradation, loud the execrations of mankind, deep and eternal the odium of posterity. Let him beware of the temptation, lest he share the fate of him, who so lately seemed to hold the destinies of Europe in his hand. The career of military power glared upon the eye, and bewildered the senses, but was followed by swift retribution upon the usurper. He, who might forever have been honored as the champion of freedom, is consigned to the faithful historian to record in blood his deeds of injustice, usurpation and oppression. Let him then, who still soars in the meridian of success, warned by the fate of lawless ambition, take counsel from the Great and Good Fayette, crowned with the benedictions of a grateful nation; let him learn wisdom from his own imputed prototype, and become unequivocally, irrevocably, gloriously, the benefactor of nations, ‘The Washington of the South.[1]

But that Timothy Fuller was capable of doing

  1. Oration on Peace, p. 19.