His
boyhood and youth were passed in that period of
Post-Revolutionary reaction which exhibits the United States in
some of its most unlovely aspects. Historians like Henry Adams
and McMaster have painted in detail the low estate of education,
religion, and art as the new century began. The bitter feeling of
the nascent nation toward Great Britain was intensified by the
War of 1812. The Napoleonic Wars had threatened to break the last
threads of our friendship for France, and suspicion of the Holy
Alliance led to an era of national self-assertion of which the
Monroe Doctrine was only one expression. The raw Jacksonism of
the West seemed to be gaining upon the older civilizations
represented by Virginia and Massachusetts. The self-made type of
man began to pose as the genuine American. And at this moment
came forward a man of natural lucidity and serenity of mind, of
perfect poise and good temper, who knew both Europe and America
and felt that they ought to know one another better and to like
one another more. That was Irving's service as an international
mediator.
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