them, and may their sturdy tribe increase.

Far to the South, Mr. President, separated from this section by a
line--once defined in irrepressible difference, once traced in
fratricidal blood, and now, thank God, but a vanishing shadow--lies the
fairest and richest domain of this earth. It is the home of a brave and
hospitable people. There is centred all that can please or prosper
humankind. A perfect climate above a fertile soil yields to the
husbandman every product of the temperate zone. There, by night the
cotton whitens beneath the stars, and by day the wheat locks the
sunshine in its bearded sheaf. In the same field the clover steals the
fragrance of the wind, and the tobacco catches the quick aroma of the
rains. There are mountains stored with exhaustless treasures;
forests--vast and primeval; and rivers that, tumbling or loitering,
run wanton to the sea. Of the three essential items of all
industries--cotton, iron and wood--that region has easy control. In
cotton, a fixed monopoly--in iron, proven supremacy--in timber, the
reserve supply of the Republic. From this assured and permanent
advantage, against which artificial conditions cannot much longer
prevail, has grown an amazing system of industries. Not maintained by
human contrivance of tariff or capital, afar off from the fullest and
cheapest source of supply, but resting in divine assurance, within touch
of field and mine and forest--not set amid costly farms from which
competition has driven the farmer in despair, but amid cheap and sunny
lands, rich with agriculture, to which neither season nor soil has set a
limit--this system of industries is mounting to a splendor that shall
dazzle and illumine the world. That, sir, is the picture and the promise
of my home--a land better and fairer than I have told you, and yet but
fit setting in its material excellence for the loyal and gentle quality
of its citizenship. Against that, sir, we have New England, recruiting
the Republic from its sturdy loins, shaking from its overcrowded hives
new swarms of workers, and touching this land all over with its energy
and its courage. And yet--while in the Eldorado of which I have told you
but fifteen per cent. of its lands are cultivated, its mines scarcely
touched, and its population so scant that, were it set equidistant, the
sound of the human voice could not be heard from Virginia to
Texas--while on the threshold of nearly every house in New England
stands a son, seeki