Forgetting that the actual name implies Unity, and, when we consider its place in the preamble of the National Constitution, that it implies Nationality also, the partisans of State pretensions argue from it against even the idea of country; and here I have a curious and authentic illustration. In reply to an inquirer,[61] who wished a single name, Mr. Calhoun exclaimed: “Not at all; we have no name because we ought to have none; we are only States united, and have no country.” Alas, if it be so!--if this well-loved land, for which so many have lived, for which so many have died, is not our country! But this strange utterance shows how completely the poison of these pretensions had destroyed the common sense, as well as the patriotism, of this much-mistaken man. Names may be given by sovereign power to new discoveries or settlements; but, as a general rule, they grow out of the soil, they are autochthonous. Even Augustus, when ruling the Roman world, confessed that he could not make a new word,[62] and Plato tells us that “a creator of names is the rarest of human creatures.”[63] Reflecting on these things, we may appreciate something of the difficulty in the way of a new name at the formation of the National Constitution. As this was little more than a transcript of prevailing ideas and institutions, it was natural to take the name used in the Declaration of Independence. And yet it must not be forgotten that there was a name of different character which was much employed. Congress was called “Continental,” the army “Continental,” the money “Continental,”--a term certainly of unity, as well as vastness. But there was still another national designation, accepted at home and abroad. Our country was called “America,” and we were called “Americans.” Here was a natural, unsought, and instinctive name,--a growth, and not a creation,--implying national unity and predominance, if not exclusive power, on the continent. It was used not occasionally or casually, but constantly,--not merely in newspapers, but in official documents. Not an address of Congress, not a military order, not a speech, which does not contain this term, at once so expansive and so unifying. At the opening of the first Continental Congress, Patrick Henry, in a different mood from that of a later day, announced the national unity under this very name. Declaring the boundaries of the several Colonies effaced, and the distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New-Yorkers, and New-Englanders as no more, he exclaimed, in words of comprehensive patriotism, “I am not a Virginian, but an _American_.”[64] Congress took up the strain, and commissioned Washington as commander-in-chief of the armies “for the defence of _American_ liberty”;[65] and Washington himself, in his first general order at Cambridge, assuming his great command, announced that the armies were “for the support and defence of the liberties of _America_;[66] and in a letter to Congress, just before the Battle