lic first formulated the Constitution under
which we live, this remedy was untried, and no one could
foretell how it would work. They themselves began the experiment
almost immediately by adding new States to the original
thirteen. Excellent people in the East viewed this initial
expansion of the country with great alarm. Exactly as during the
colonial period many good people in the mother country thought
it highly important that settlers should be kept out of the Ohio
Valley in the interest of the fur companies, so after we had
become a nation many good people on the Atlantic coast felt
grave apprehension lest they might somehow be hurt by the
westward growth of the nation.

These good people shook their heads over the formation of States
in the fertile Ohio Valley, which now forms part of the heart of
our nation, and they declared that the destruction of the
Republic had been accomplished when through the Louisiana
Purchase we acquired nearly half of what is now that same
Republic's present territory. Nor was their feeling unnatural.
Only the adventurous and the farseeing can be expected heartily
to welcome the process of expansion, for a nation which expands
is a nation which is entering upon a great career, and with
greatness there must of necessity come perils which daunt all
save the most stout-hearted.

We expand by carving the wilderness into Territories, and out of
these Territories building new States when once they had
received as permanent settlers a sufficient number of our own
people. Being a practical nation, we have never tried to force
on any section of our new territory an unsuitable form of
government merely because it was suitable for another section
under different conditions. Of the territory covered by the
Louisiana Purchase, a portion was given statehood within a few
years. Another portion has not been admitted to statehood,
although a century has elapsed, although doubtless it soon will
be. In each case we showed the practical governmental genius of
our race by devising methods suitable to meet the actual
existing needs, not by insisting upon the application of some
abstract shibboleth to all our new possessions alike, no matter
how incongruous this application might sometimes be.

Over by far the major part of the territory, however, our peo