which gives them
hope, and strength, and courage. What weakness, what degeneracy, what
dwindling of power for good and retrogression of thought and aim would
be the consequence of permanent division! What a lamentable fall in our
position among the nations of the earth, and what a diminution of our
capacity for progress among ourselves and for usefulness to mankind! It
is our duty and our destiny to develop all the physical resources of the
continent--to stimulate its agricultural capabilities--to bring to light
its boundless mineral treasures--to pierce its mountains and level its
valleys--to control its mighty floods--and to make it worthy to be the
seat of human freedom and of human empire. Nor is it less our destiny to
build up a moral and social power and a political organization, which
shall shed abroad a new and glorious light, beaming with immortal hopes,
and penetrating to the farthest verge of the habitable globe. Nature, in
every form of benignant usefulness and unequalled grandeur, invites us
to this tremendous task. The loyal people of the nation have not been
insensible to these mystic calls and the noble anticipations growing out
of them, fraught as they are with the happiness and progress of the
human race. They have projected works of the most gigantic proportions,
nor, although they are conscious that union is indispensable to their
success, have they hesitated to begin them, with all the high confidence
necessary to their completion. Even amid the perils and the vast
expenditures of civil war have they embarked in the grand enterprise of
uniting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by a continental highway, equal
in its cost and its importance to the power and resources of a mighty
empire. Vast internal streams and lakes call for union by canals, which
shall typify the union of hearts and of interests destined to bind
together millions of freemen, whose connection of brotherhood and
national unity shall be as lasting as the perpetual flow of our mighty
rivers, and as full of blessings as our great lakes are of their pure
and crystal waters. The agitation of these momentous schemes, under
existing circumstances, is a phenomenon indicating a consciousness of
security and of vast power in the community, which, at the same time
that it is engaged in the perilous and bloody work of preserving the
Union, is preparing to perform the most important duties appertaining to
the nation in the hour of its most perfectly