Our
citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our
citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction.
By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our
great title is AMERICANS- our inferior one varies with the place.
So far as my endeavors could go, they have all been directed to
conciliate the affections, unite the interests, and draw and keep
the mind of the country together; and the better to assist in this
foundation work of the revolution, I have avoided all places of profit
or office, either in the state I live in, or in the United States;
kept myself at a distance from all parties and party connections,
and even disregarded all private and inferior concerns: and when we
take into view the great work which we have gone through, and feel, as
we ought to feel, the just importance of it, we shall then see, that
the little wranglings and indecent contentions of personal parley, are
as dishonorable to our characters, as they are injurious to our
repose.
It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with
which it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country
appeared to me in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural
reconciliation with those who were determined to reduce her, instead
of striking out into the only line that could cement and save her, A
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, made it impossible for me, feeling as I
did, to be silent: and if, in the course of more than seven years, I
have rendered her any service, I have likewise added something to
the reputation of literature, by freely and disinterestedly
employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing that there may
be genius without prostitution.
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