The Washington union. [volume] (City of Washington [D.C.]) 1857-1859, 1859-02-19
asKELEroNp srATEsMANsHIp


country. We live in an age Of great events and
mighty development Our progress is not that Of
conquest Of arms, of violence wrong but il is
in the righteous fudIment Of tho divine Injunction
to be fruitful and multiply, 10 30 forth and occupy
the face Of the earth. la nothing has Providence
vouchsafed its benefaction 10 our country SO hber-
ally or so Significantly IN preserving ,ls from tho
scourge Of foreign and iuternecine conflicts
aud directing the whole thoughts aspirations, and
activities Of our people into the channels Of peaceful
progress and material development,
Planted in the centre of great continent, in
region prolific of every product animal and vegeta-
ble that can flourish between the Of the arctic
and the heats and miasnlas of the tropical zones
with the Atlantic on one hand, the Pacific on the
other, and great streams in the interior, tempting
to universal commerce; nhabitng country pre-
scnting all the varieties of soil and surface Of tenn
peraturc and crop, which the most diversified agri-
culture could require--a country teemng, more
over with every valuable and precious mineral priced
ia the arts or in located, too, midway
between the dense cfete civilizations Of Asia and the
iron despotisms Of Europe; looming up as a land
of promise TO the longing gaze Of the downtrodden
populations in both continents with an active and
rapidlydeveoping system of marine transportation,
bringing us into quick and iacile contact with these
people on either hand and accommodating wealth
Of cash capital which at last begins to be commer-
surate with our vast material and industrial re-
sourccs-it is impossible thatourprogressshould not
be the most rapid and stupendous that
known before in the career Of civilization
Ithas not been fifty years since ours was one Of
the most diminutive powers of Christendom, and
since the great European powers regarded every
mark of consideration which they vouchsafed to us
as an act Of patronizing condcscension. Atlresent
no power on earth bring into field to meet any
great exigency of State, after due time for prepare
ton, more powerful army or navy, or carry on
great contest with greater wealth Of resources in
men, money, or supplies. Our population and power
even now almost doubles that of any Of the great
powers which took the field against Napoleon in the
second decade of the century and, if we not at
this day the greatest power the globe, it is
tain that we rank among the few great leading
powers. rH H@
1t is not recolleced by many that this rapid
growth and this rise in rank among nations, has not
been regular and gradual but that, while it has, in
deed been constant from the beginning, it has
nevertheless been in great part sudden within the
period of fifteen years past Many financial causes
concured in depressing the energies and rctarding
the development of the country during the period
which interviewed between the close of the last war
with Great Britain and The annexation Of Texas.
1t has been only since the latter event. which we
refer to as a historical period and not pro-
ducing cause, that the most marked and astonishing
development of the country has occurred The ae-
ton of railroads, of ocean and river steam naviga-
ton, of the ieegraph and of the Thousand and one
inventions and projections that have been made in
machinery and the arts, has been the producing
cause of this marvellous development aud expansion
ofour country and these agencies had told with COM
paratively little effect before 1914 That about
the period in which our people first began to appre
bend the extraordinary desliuies which We're open
ing TO the republic; and it has been since that Pc
Rod that American civilization has been carried
across the vast central regions Of the continent and
planted on the shores Of the Pacific.
II was the masculine mind of Jefferson which first
conceived the probability Of this result and il
by his procurement that the expedition of Lewis
and Clarke sent out, early in the century, to
plorc and take possession, in name, of the val
ley Of the Columbia or Oregon river. But how far
did his inspired prescience outsrip the ideas
Of the common mind Even twenty years after or only
thirty hye years ago, representative Of great ntin
enoe and nellectfrom Virginia, exerted himself with
unwontea zeal to induce Congress to occupy Oregon
aud our Pacific coast in such as wonld rem
der our title good against all the world to the line Of
A 40, which we claimed. His measure was pro-
nouncod visionary and chimerical, and was lost in
House which rejected it because it could not realize
that our institutions would reach those distant
shores The consequence has been, that we lost six
degrees of latitude, the gold mines of the Fraser
river the beautiful Island of Vancouver, (which is
the Long Island Of The Pacifc,) and have been
CURED to concede TO Great Britain the free naviga-
ton Of the Columbia, of our greatest rivers
What if Great Britain owned Long Island and pos
sessed the free navigation of the Hudson
The narrow views of the men Of 1923 were ex
cusable, however, in comparison with those of the
men of our own times, who would still dwarf the
country in spite of it's subsequent history. There
are men of miniature vision at present in our
public councils, who would dwarf The Union to the
Dimensions of 1910 or 1903 who would conine it's
operations within the narrow horizon Of their
vision Who xuould rctluce and