erein in the early days by
the soldiers, missionaries, explorers, and traders who did their
work for the honor of the proud banners of France and Castile.

While the settlers of English-speaking stock and those of Dutch,
German, and Scandinavian origin, who were associated with them,
were still clinging close to the eastern seaboard, the pioneers
of Spain and of France had penetrated deep into the hitherto
unknown wildness of the West and had wandered far and wide
within the boundaries of what is now our mighty country. The
very cities themselves--St. Louis, New Orleans, Santa Fe, N.
Mex.--bear witness by their titles to the nationalities of their
founders. It was not until the Revolution had begun that the
English-speaking settlers pushed west across the Alleghanies,
and not until a century ago that they entered in to possess the
land upon which we now stand.

We have met here to-day to commemorate the hundredth anniversary
of the event which more than any other, after the foundation of
the Government, and always excepting its preservation,
determined the character of our national life--determined that
we should be a great expanding nation instead of relatively a
small and stationary one.

Of course, it was not with the Louisiana Purchase that our
career of expansion began. In the middle of the Revolutionary
war the Illinois region, including the present States of
Illinois and Indiana, was added to our domain by force of arms,
as a sequel to the adventurous expedition of George Rogers Clark
and his frontier riflemen.

Later the treaties of Jay and Pinckney materially extended our
real boundaries to the west. But none of these events was of so
striking a character as to fix the popular imagination. The old
thirteen colonies had always claimed that their rights stretched
westward to the Mississippi, and vague and unreal though these
claims were until made good by conquest, settlement, and
diplomacy, they still served to give the impression that the
earliest westward movements of our people were little more than
the filling in of already existing national boundaries.

But there could be no illusion about the acquisition of the vast
territory beyond the Mississippi, stretching westward to the
Pacific, which in that day was known as Louisiana. This immense
region