Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the Western
Continent alone,
Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel, O ship, is steadied by
thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or
swim with thee,
With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, heroes, epics, wars,
thou bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant."

Shortly before the Civil War, a great German, exiled from his native
land for his love of freedom, came from his new home among the pioneers
of the Middle West to set forth in Faneuil Hall, the "cradle of
liberty," in Boston, his vision of the young America that was forming in
the West, "the last depository of the hopes of all true friends of
humanity." Speaking of the contrast between the migrations to the
Mississippi Valley and those of the Old World in other centuries, he
said:

It is now not a barbarous multitude pouncing upon old and
decrepit empires, not a violent concussion of tribes
accompanied by all the horrors of general destruction, but we
see the vigorous elements--peaceably congregating and mingling
together on virgin soil--; led together by the irresistible
attraction of free and broad principles; undertaking to
commence a new era in the history of the world, without first
destroying the results of the progress of past periods;
undertaking to found a cosmopolitan nation without marching
over the dead bodies of slain millions.

If Carl Schurz had lived to see the outcome of that Germany from which
he was sent as an exile, in the days when Prussian bayonets dispersed
the legislatures and stamped out the beginnings of democratic rule in
his former country, could he have better pictured the contrasts between
the Prussian and the American spirit? He went on to say:

Thus was founded the _great colony of free humanity_, which
has not old England alone, but the _world_ for its mother
country. And in the colony of free humanity, whose mother
country is the world, they established the Republic of equal
rights where the title of manhood is the title to citizenship.
My friends, if I had a thousand tongues, and a voice as strong
as the thunder of heaven, they would not be sufficient to
impress upon your minds forcibly enough the greatness of this
idea, the oversh