n
its farther shore, from the Lake of the Woods to the Balize, we
met the flag of Spain. Our southern border was the 31st parallel
of latitude; and the Spanish Floridas, stretching across to the
Mississippi, lay between us and the Gulf of Mexico. We acquired
from Spain the right of deposit for exports and imports at New
Orleans, but the citizens of the Union who lived west of the
Alleganies were discontented and irritated to find a foreign power
practically controlling their trade by intercepting their access
to the sea. One of the great problems imposed upon the founders
of the Union was to remove the burdens and embarrassments which
obstructed the development of the Western States, and thus to render
their inhabitants as loyal by reason of material prosperity as they
already were in patriotic sympathy. The opportunity for relief
came from remote and foreign causes, without our own agency; but
the courageous statesmanship which discerned and grasped the
opportunity, deserved, as it has received, the commemoration of
three generations. The boundaries of the Union were vastly enlarged,
but the geographical change was not greater than the effect produced
upon the political and social condition of the people. The ambitions
developed by the acquisition of new territory led to serious
conflicts of opinion between North and South,--conflicts which
steadily grew in intensity until, by the convulsion of war, slavery
was finally extinguished.

TERRITORIAL CESSIONS IN AMERICA.

A great European struggle, which ended twelve years before our
Revolution began, had wrought important changes in the political
control of North America. The Seven Years' War, identical in time
with the French and Indian War in America, was closed in 1763 by
numerous treaties to which every great power in Europe was in some
sense a party. One of the most striking results of these treaties
on this side of the Atlantic was the cession of Florida to Great
Britain by Spain in exchange for the release of Cuba, which the
English and colonial forces under Lord Albemarle had wrested from
Spanish authority the preceding year. England held Florida for
twenty years, when among the disasters brought upon her by our
Revolution was its retrocession to Spain in 1783,--a result which
was accounted by our forefathers a great gain to the new Republic.
Still more striking were the losses of France. Fifty years before,