Excerpt from The Liberators: A Story of Future American Politics Colonel Randolph shook his head and smiled a little sadly. Don't make that mistake, my lad, he said. Don't ever believe that a nation's fighters are greater than its thinkers, or that a man who leads a regiment to battle is greater than the man who has given the men in that regiment an idea that they are willing to die for. Some day this country will ap preciate the man whose words you have just quoted, and make room for Tom Paine in the gallery of its immortals. He and Franklin did as much for the Colonies as any. Soldier of them all. No general of the Civil War ranks beside the commander-in-chief, Abraham Lincoln. It was he of whom I have been thinking all afternoon. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.