It is rather interesting to find that their contemporaries of the Revolutionary period did not share that high estimation of the New Englanders which they themselves clung to so tenaciously and have writ so large in our history that the tradition of New England's unselfish wonder-working in that olden time has never perished. Most of us are likely to know something about the rather low estimation, at most toleration, in which during the Revolutionary period many of the members of Congress from New England were held by fellow-members of Congress from other portions of the country. They were the most difficult to bring into harmony with others, the slowest to see anything that did not directly enhance the interests of New England; they were more constantly in opposition to great movements that meant much for the future of the colonies themselves and the government of the United States afterward than any others. We are prone to excuse this, however, on the score {445} of their intolerant Puritanism, and taught by our New England schoolmasters, most of us, at least, fondly cherish the notion that all the New Englanders made supreme sacrifices for the country and did it with a whole-hearted spirit of self-forgetfulness that made every man, above all in Massachusetts, an out-and-out patriot. It is curious to find how different were the opinions of those from other portions of the country who came in contact with New Englanders at this time, from that which is to be found in their histories.