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Such were the men unto whose keeping, as instruments of Providence, the destinies of America were for the time intrusted; and it has been well remarked, that men, other than such as these, ---an ignorant, untaught mass, like those who have formed the physical elements of other revolutionary movements, without sufficient intellect to guide them and control them---could not have conceived, planned, and carried into execution, such a mighty movement, one so fraught with tangible marks of political wisdom, as the American Revolution. And it is a matter of just pride to the American people that not one of that noble band who periled life, fortune, and honor, in the cause of freedom, ever fell from his high estate into moral degradation, or dimmed, by word or deed, the brightness of that effulgence which halos the Declaration of American Independence.