for partisan purposes, in opposition to the administration of Washington and the Elder Adams, were the fundamental cause of the Great Rebellion. In none has the maxim that the evil that men do lives after them been more fully illustrated than in the case of Thomas Jefferson." And near the end of his life the Editor outlined the same view as follows (February 23, 1909): "Jefferson was the man who, after the formation of the Constitution and the making of the nation under it, for partisan purposes, set up the claim that there was in fact no nation, no national government, but only a league of states, that might be abandoned or broken up by any of the members at will. This was the Great Rebellion. This was the Civil War. He was the evil genius of our national and political life."
Progress of the Hamilton idea, after its triumph in civil war, was often a theme of Mr. Scott's comments on current events. "The course of history during twenty years past (December 18, 1880) has vindicated Hamilton, demonstrated his marvelous prescience and discovered to the country the immense extent of its obligations to him. To Hamilton the country is chiefly indebted—to him it is indebted more than to all others—for the creation of a national government with sufficient power to maintain the national authority. He it was who, foreseeing the conflict between pretensions of state supremacy and the necessary powers of national authority, succeeded, in spite of tremendous opposition, in putting into the Constitution the vital forces which have sustained it. Appomattox was his victory. . . . The glory of Hamilton is the greatness of America." And on February 12, 1908, the same thought moved him to say: "The idea is growing that the Government of the United States is no longer a Government of limited powers but may cover all local conditions. This is a vindication of the principles of Hamilton against those of Jefferson." The fame of the Virginian, said Mr. Scott, will rest, in future history, on his acquisition of Louisiana and Oregon; this greatest of his works will fix him in history as the nation's chief expansionist. Acquisition of Louisiana was "the most important of all the facts of our history because it created the conditions necessary
