On the opposite side Robert E. Lee fought "for a principle which is in a sense scarcely less American than the principle of Union. He represented the idea of the inherent--the essential--separateness of self-government. . . . Lee did not believe in secession, but he did believe in the local rootage of all government. This is at the bottom, no doubt, an English idea; but it has had a characteristic American development. It is the reverse side of the shield which bears upon its obverse the devices of the Union,[167-1] . . . Lee . . . could not conceive of the nation apart from the State: above {168} all, he could not live in the nation divorced from his neighbors. His own community should decide his political destiny and duty."[168-1] The outcome of the American Civil War, to those in the Pan-Angle world who were looking forward to an end of separatings--and this included many in the British Isles,--gave hope and inspiration. It demonstrated the reality of American nationhood and, more important still, it encouraged the race on its path towards convergence. It made natural the Canadian Constitution, otherwise known as the British North America Act of 1867. It made reasonable the foundation in London of the Royal Colonial Institute in 1868, whose motto is "United Empire."[168-2] It made comprehensible the theses of such books as Dilke's _Greater Britain_, 1868, and Seeley's _Expansion of England_, 1883.[168-3] Later were to come the convergences of the Australian states in 1900 and the South African provinces in 1909. "For the idea of national unity the people of the United States twenty-five years ago made sacrifices of life and money without a parallel in modern history. No one now doubts that the end justified the enormous expenditure of national force. 'The Union must be preserved' was the pregnant sentence into which Lincoln condensed the national duty of the moment, and to maintain this principle he was able to concentrate the national energy for a supreme effort. The strong man who {169} saved the great republic from disruption takes his place, without a question, among the benefactors of mankind."[169-1]