US Presidency
1865

At the inaugurationof Washington the foreign relations of the country were few and its tradewas repressed by hostile regulations; now all the civilized nations ofthe globe welcome our commerce, and their governments profess toward usamity. Then our country felt its way hesitatingly along an untried path, with States so little bound together by rapid means of communication asto be hardly known to one another, and with historic traditions extendingover very few years; now intercourse between the States is swift and intimate; the experience of centuries has been crowded into a few generations, andhas created an intense, indestructible nationality. Then our jurisdictiondid not reach beyond the inconvenient boundaries of the territory whichhad achieved independence; now, through cessions of lands, first colonizedby Spain and France, the country has acquired a more complex character, and has for its natural limits the chain of lakes, the Gulf of Mexico, and on the east and the west the two great oceans.