was admittedly the territory of a foreign power, of a
European kingdom. None of our people had ever laid claim to a
foot of it. Its acquisition could in no sense be treated as
rounding out any existing claims. When we acquired it, we made
evident once for all that consciously and of set purpose we had
embarked on a career of expansion; that we had taken our place
among those daring and hardy nations who risk much with the hope
and desire of winning high position among the great powers of
the earth. As is so often the case in nature the law of
development of a living organism showed itself in its actual
workings to be wiser than the wisdom of the wisest.

This work of expansion was by far the greatest work of our
people during the years that intervened between the adoption of
the Constitution and the outbreak of the civil war. There were
other questions of real moment and importance, and there were
many which at the time seemed such to those engaged in answering
them; but the greatest feat of our forefathers of those
generations was the deed of the men, who with pack train or
wagon train, on horseback, on foot, or by boat upon the waters
pushed the frontier ever westward across the continent.

Never before had the world seen the kind of national expansion
which gave our people all that part of the American continent
lying west of the thirteen original States--the greatest
landmark in which was the Louisiana Purchase. Our triumph in
this process of expansion was indissolubly bound up with the
success of our peculiar kind of Federal Government, and this
success has been so complete that because of its very
completeness we now sometimes fail to appreciate not only the
all importance but the tremendous difficulty of the problem with
which our nation was originally faced.

When our forefathers joined to call into being this nation, they
undertook a task for which there was but little encouraging
precedent. The development of civilization from the earliest
period seemed to show the truth of two propositions: In the
first place, it had always proved exceedingly difficult to
secure both freedom and strength in any Government; and in the
second place, it had always proved well-nigh impossible for a
nation to expand without either breaking up or becoming a
centralized tyranny.