Americans have yet to learn, that each generation must fight out its own good fight, and not rely for the preservation of its hardihood and independence, upon moth-eaten parchments nor on fraudulent statesmen, now in the graveyard — statesmen who spent their petty babblesome lives; not in doing heroic things, but in founding and enthroning the abominations that afflict us all to-day like a palsy. Our national hero-worship badly wants reconstruction.
Source: wiktionary