CIVIL WARS
a tyrant. Mr Roosevelt describes him as a man "cursed with love of power," a man who "had acquired a dictatorial habit of mind." He asserts that "if Cromwell had been a Washington the Puritan revolution might have been made permanent[1]." But to judge thus is to misunderstand the man and the time. There were only two alternatives to Cromwell's rule, anarchy and the restoration of the Stuarts. In America as in England the war was followed by a "reconstruction period," and the task of rebuilding was more difficult than the task of winning battles.
In England it was even more difficult than it was in America. During the American Civil War the constitution was not destroyed as ours was. The Americans had the advantage of retaining the old fabric intact, strengthened rather than weakened by the storm through which it had passed, and needing only a few amendments to adapt it to the new state of things. The instrument
- ↑ Roosevelt, Life of Cromwell, 188, 206.
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