ry
infancy of the United States far-sighted statesmen saw and predicted
that, weak in population and apparently restricted in available
territory as the new Republic then was, it had within it the germs of
colossal grandeur, and would at no remote day occupy the continent of
America with its institutions, its authority, and its peaceful
influence.

That expectation has been thus far signally verified. The United States
entered at once into the occupation of their rightful possessions
westward to the banks of the Mississippi. Next, by the spontaneous
proffer of France, they acquired Louisiana and its territorial
extension, or right of extension, north to the line of the treaty
demarcation between France and Great Britain, and west to the Pacific
Ocean. Next, by amicable arrangement with Spain, they acquired the
Floridas, and complete southern maritime frontiers upon the Gulf of
Mexico. Then came the union with the independent State of Texas,
followed by the acquisitions of California and New Mexico, and then of
Arizona. Finally, Russia has ceded to us Alaska, and the continent of
North America has become independent of Europe, except so much of it as
continues to maintain political relations with Great Britain.

Meanwhile, partly by natural increase and partly by voluntary
immigration from Europe, our population has risen from 3,000,000 to
nearly 40,000,000; the number of States and Territories united under
the Constitution has been augmented from thirteen to forty-seven; the
development of internal wealth and power has kept pace with political
expansion; we have occupied in part and peopled the vast interior of
the continent; we have bound the Pacific to the Atlantic by a chain of
intervening States and organized Territories; we have delivered the
Republic from the anomaly and the ignominy of domestic servitude; we
have constitutionally fixed the equality of all races and of all men
before the law; and we have established, at the cost of a great civil
war--a cost, however, not beyond the value of such a result--the
indissoluble national unity of the United States.

In all these marked stages of national progress, from the Declaration
of Independence to the recent amendments of the Constitution, it is
impossible not to perceive a providential series and succession of
events, intimately attached one to the other, and possessed of definite
character as a whole, whatever incidental departures from such
uniformity may ha