  Liberia crystallizes these strands of argument; its founders sought to establish a “civilized nationality” there, as Crummell describes it (“The Responsibility of the First Fathers of a Country” [AA], 132). That was their “tremendous responsibility” and “great obligation,” namely, “to act as worthy trustees of distant generations and of future times.” They exemplified what he thinks is required to fulfill the duty to future progress. What remains is the need to link “sentiment” and “outward forms and symbols” (134); such is the substance of national cultures. Civil government is not the main site of this experiment in making a national culture, but its structure matters since “man's opportunities for personal freedom, for intellectual advancement, for social comfort, for domestic bliss, and for religious growth, depend very measurably upon his civil status” (135). The nature of this dependence runs deep, and may even be organic: “an ennobled manhood and the masculine virtues are generally the fruits of distinct national systems”; “the spirit of a people and their form of government are mostly reciprocal; …for the higher kind of human character, you are forced to seek an analogy of rule and system as its parent.” This underwrites a sorting of national cultures. “All the art, the refinement, the magnificence of Paris [will] fail to realize that ideal of human government which is the aspiration of every free soul,” he writes, “and which is an essential element in the growth of free and manly character” (136). But we are political agents, and this culture is something we need to take an active role in making. We are creators in the sense that we can act in an unconstrained way. But the range of choices of government is limited to free or repressive; one or the other must come to be. He argues that that is a matter of necessity since, “according to the constitution of things, no other political systems than these can exist” (137). It is our choosing that determines which comes to be. He obviously endorses a free civil government, and his posing of a choice to his audience in keeping with his set-up of the question is meant to make the point that free government is preferable because it leads to human flourishing. It is less a political philosophy than a social and moral philosophy; the institutions that make our collective social efforts effective ought to be free in order to enable us to become civilized, noble, and enlightened, leading to “a system which will enlarge the souls of men” and “give them manhood and superiority” (139). A free system thus “distinguishes calm Republicanism from wild and lawless Democracy.” The institutional framework of action thus creates the space for the individual moral life, that “good” life one tries to make for oneself.  Such a system “starts men in the race for improvement…seeks their moral elevation, and aims to strengthen their souls” (140).