urpose. The question continued to exist. It grew
threatening, portentous, and finally overshadowed the whole political
domain. Every effort to settle it peacefully only added to the strain;
the union between the States weakened as this mighty hammer of discord
struck down their combining links; finally the bonds yielded, the
slavery question thrust itself like a great wedge between, and a mighty
struggle began to decide whether the Union should stand or fall. With
the events of this struggle we are not here concerned. They are told at
length in their special place. All that we shall here say is this: While
the war was fought for the preservation of the Union, it was clearly
perceived that this union could never be stable while the disorganizing
element remained, and the war led inevitably to the abolition of
slavery, the apple of discord which had been thrown between the States.
The greatness of the result was adequate to the greatness of the
conflict. With the end of the Civil War, for the first time in their
history, an actual and stable Union was established between the States.

We have one more war to record, the brief but important struggle of
1898, entered into by the United States under the double impulse of
indignation against the barbarous destruction of the _Maine_ and of
sympathy for the starving and oppressed people of Cuba. It yielded
results undreamed of in its origin. Not only was Cuba wrested from the
feeble and inhuman hands of Spain, but new possessions in the oceans of
the east and west were added to the United States, and for the first
time this country took its predestined place among the nations engaged
in shaping the destiny of the world, rose to imperial dignity in the
estimation of the rulers of Europe, and fairly won that title of the
GREATER REPUBLIC which this work is written to commemorate.

Such has been the record of this country in war. Its record in peace has
been marked by as steady a career of victory, and with results
stupendous almost beyond the conception of man, when we consider that
the most of them have been achieved within little more than a century.
During the colonial period the energies of the American people were
confined largely to agriculture, Great Britain sternly prohibiting any
progress in manufacture and any important development of commerce. It
need hardly be said that the restless and active spirit of the colonists
chafed under these restrictions, and that the attemp