EPILOGUE.
Posterity has pronounced judgment upon the two liberators of South America, upon San Martin and upon Bolivar.
They were both great men, the greatest after Washington that America has produced. Both fulfilled their mission. The one gave the first signal for a continental war, the other carried it to a glorious termination. Without San Martin at the South and Bolivar at the North it is impossible to conceive how the forces of the revolution could have worked together towards one end; neither is it possible to conceive how one could have completed his task without the other. Nevertheless, as politicians both went astray; neither reached the level of the public opinion of their day, and both failed to comprehend the instincts of the masses they led. They were military leaders only, and knew not how to direct the organic evolution of the peoples.
Time, which dissipates false and enhances true glory, has thrown much light upon matters which during their lifetime seemed obscure. Their outlines are now seen clearly against the horizon of history; they stand forth as symbols of the epoch which gave birth to a new republican world, the greatest political phenomenon of the nineteenth century.
The Argentine Republic and Chile, led by San Martin, were victorious in the South, and carried their arms from sea to sea, and from the temperate zone to the equator.
