US Presidency
1884

Europe and Africa are nearer to New York, and Asia nearer to California, than are these two great States to each other by sea. Weeks of steam voyage or months under sail are consumed in the passage around the Horn, with the disadvantage of traversing tempestuous waters or risking the navigation of the Straits of Magellan. A nation like ours can not rest satisfied with such a separation of its mutually dependent members. We possess an ocean border of considerably over 10,000 miles on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and, including Alaska, of some 10,000 miles on the Pacific. Within a generation the western coast has developed into an empire, with a large and rapidly growing population, with vast, but partially developed, resources. At the present rate of increase the end of the century will see us a commonwealth of perhaps nearly 100,000,000 inhabitants, of which the West should have a considerably larger and richer proportion than now.