Mariposa Democrat., 1857-07-30


fed, in its results the most important. With
it the independence of the country was estab-
lshcd, and her institutions built upon basis,
broad as the Continent, and solid as its noun
tain rocks. Without it, the war might have
been fought, the same bloody deeds might have
been witnessed, the same heroic daring and
generous sacrifices might have been SCENT
may be that equitable terms Of adjustment
might have been obtained yet the colonists
would have closed the contest as they COM
menced 1.-THE subjects of England.
Ifthen it be proper that the American people
should assemble to commemorate the remem-
brance of the Revolution true it is that the An
niversary of the signing of the Declaration Of
Independence has, with great propriety, been
set apart for that purpose. Since that Decla-
ration was signed by those men who perilled
their all, and pledged their "lives, their for
tunes and their sacred honors" to effect the in
dependence oftheir country, period of eighty
one years have elapsed. And what an eighty.
one years has it been At that time the limits
Of the confederacy were confined to the thir-
teen original States, which with the exception
of the giant one of Pennsylvania, fringed the
Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida, with q
sparse population, confined exclusively to the
sea-board. The western portion of the Caro-
linas, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and even New
York itself, was an uninhabited and almost un-
explored wilderness, covered with giant for
ests, filled with game, and occupied by the
aboriginal propretors of the soil, and the har-
dy pioneer whose adventurous spirit carried
him so far beyond the limits of civilization as
the tributaries of the St. Lawrence, and the
Lakes of New York, or the head waters of the
Ohio in Pennsylvania--now covered all over
with hamlets, towns and cities, smiling with
fruitful fields and cchoing with the happy
voices Of civilized and enterprizing industry
were not only exposed to the trials and hard
ships incident to early settlement, but to the
more dangerous peril Of bold and barbarous
warfare with indiscriminate savages.
The tall and primeval forests that covered
the beautiful States Of Kentucky and Tennes-
see, had then scarcely learned to echo the
voices Of their future demoshers; and that
vast, fertile, and luxuriant land, running from
the Ohio northward to the Lakes, and stretch
ing westward to the colonial limits, out of
which so many rich and populous States have
since been carved still slumbered in the repose
of Nature.
Louisiana and that territory skirting the
right bank of the Mississippi, and thence
sweeping far west to the eastern limits of Cali.
forna, and farther north, overlapping the
Rocky Mountains, and descending through the
beautiful vallies of the Columbia, until it fronts
the Asiatic continent along the Pacific coast
controlling that great aqueous artery of the
Union, the Mississippi and its tributaries-con-
sttuted an appendage to the crown of France !;
while Florida, New Mexico, and our own gold
en- State acknowledged the crown of Spain.
The superficial area of the thirteen original
States scarcely exceeded three hundred and
seyenty-three thousand square miles--a little
more than two such States as California-and
her population at the close of the Revolution
amounted to only three millions of people
Her commerce was inconsiderable, and her
manufactures were without a name. Those
great seaboard cities in whose markets the
agricultural products of every land, the manu-
features, and the mineral wealth of the world
may now be found, were then but towns and
villages, the most considerable of which could
not boast of a population superior to that of
Sacramento The spot on which Lowell, the
Manchester of America, now stands, long after
the Revolution was only known for its roman
tic scenery. Pttsburg, the Birmingham of the
Republic, was remembered only as the site of
a French fortress in the vicinity of which the
youthful Washington saved a veteran army of
England from annihilation, and lexington
beautiful Lexington, the pride of Kentucky,
the Athens of the Union-that has since adorn-
ed our common country with the production
of SO much Of eloquence and genius, was then
silent wilderness. st. Louis, whose levee re-
ceiyes the agricultural wealth of the west, and
New Orleans, into whose luxurious lap all the
vast commerce of the Mississippi is poured,
was not purchased until the commencement of
the nineteenth century; while Louisville, Al
ton, Quincy, Milwaukee, Dubuque, Chicago
and neither last nor least, Cincinnati, enriched
by her industry, adorned by her art and famed
alike for love and learning sprung into exist
ence within the memory of the living present
striking examples of the rapidity with which
forests fall and cities rise in the treless march
of American energy.
The little inland commerce of that period
was carried on by the tedious process of nav-
eating long and crooked rivers with sail YES
sells, or in transporting merchandise from one
town to another in wagons over bad roads,
The trip from New York to Albany, now ac-
complished in eight hours, often required a
period of several weeks, and Franklin himself
was considered dreaming enthusiast when he
pro that tbo A.