The weekly pioneer and Democrat. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1855-1865, 1860-11-09
1910 and 1880.
From the Cincinnati Enquirer

yet twenty years nave uOWu SluCe Iuat Cru
of humbug log cabins, hard cider and gold
spoons. Twenty years is great period in
the life of man, and whole generation
have grown up who have no recollection of
the days of 'Tippecanoe and Tyler too"
1t is difficult to realize the fact that 1910,
with all its memories, has faded back 80
far into the history of the past, and that we
now stand as far from that era as we did in
1910 from the date of the Missouri Crom-
promise in 1920; yet, when we look around
US we see the indications of the tremendous
ravages which Time has made and the mo-
mentous changes be has wrought
Nearly all the statesmen of l840-those
who were connected with the Administer
ton at that time-are in their graves, or
have long ceased participating in public
affairs. OF Mr.. Van Burens Cabinet of
1910, John Forsyth, Secretary of State ;
Levi Woodbury., Secretary of the Treasury;
Mahlon Dickinson, Secretary Of the Navy ;
John M. Miles, Postmaster General; Ben
jamin F. Butler, Attorney General Joel
r. Poinsett, Secretary of War, are all dead.
There is not man in the United States
Senate who was there in 1910. Nearly all
of the prominent Senators are dead, such as
CLAY, Calhoun, Webster, Silas Wright, Col.
Benton, Berrien, Preston, Poindexter and
Choate.
In the House of Representatives, save
Thos. Corwin, we look in vain for any of
the members of 1910. General jackson and
John Quincy Adams, venerable Ex-Presi.
dents, were then on the stage of action and
exercising great influence upon public at
fairs. Two of the chiefs of political strife
in 1910, Mr.. Van Buren, and John Tyler,
still live, in extreme old age, but long ago
ceasing to take part in the strifes Of the
times. In other respects what mighty
changes have these two brief decades that
separate us from 1910 witnessed! What a
difference between the United States of 1910
and the United States of 1860! Not q
mile of telegraph wire then in all our Dor
ders few railroads completed scarcely any
in the West; stages and steamboats, the
general methods of travelling the Daguer-
rian art, invented in 1889, hardly known in
1910; seventeen millions of people in the
United States then, nearly double, or thirty
two millions of people, now California,
Oregon and our Pacific coast, now the seat
of fourishing members of the American
Union, as little known to the people almost
as the center of Africa is now gold scarce
and hard to be obtained, now it comes in
almost at the rate of million of dollars a
week from California. When we looked to
Europe, we beheld Nicholas of Russia,
Louis Philippe in France, the Duke Of
Wellington in England, Metternich in Aus.
tria, as the great representative men of that
continent. They have all gone.
The youthful Queen of Great Britain,
then Just married-now grandmother |!
Hardly steamer upon the ocean, and fifteen
or sixteen days considered quick passage
to Europe. The vast Continent of Aus
tralia has been lifted up from the mists of
the Southern Ocean, which had obscured
it from the light of civilization, and become
a great member of the family of nations,
with an illimitable future before it. The
twenty years past, have indeed been activel
ones in the history of the world, and will
keep the pen of the future historian busy to
record their momentous events. The twenty
years from 1920 to 1910 were comparatively
quiet and unimportant. The world was
taking its rest, and recovering from the
tremendous shocks and the unparalleled
exertions of the wars of Napoleon and the
French Revolution of 1889. What re-
Prospect flashes upon our memory as we
look back toward 184O! The annexation of
Texas; the war with Mexico; the conquest
of California; the French Revolution, or
rather the European Revolutions in l848,
the downfall of Louis Philippe and the rise
of Napoleon III; the coupd'etat; the alliance
of France and England against Russia; the
Crimean War, the struggle before Sebasto-
pool-a siege which has no parallel in mod
ern times-the mutiny in India; the war of
France with Austria, and the appearance
again OF the French eagles upon the Italian
plains, from which they had been so long
banished.
At home the rise and progress Of the ab.
clifton agitation, which has been marching
steadily to the overthrow of our Union and
the destruction of our national prosperity
has been one of the leading features of the
times. We saw its germs in 1910, wher
Birney, as an abolition candidate for Presi.
dent but seven thousand votes in the Unit.
ed States. Then it was neglected and des
pissed Little or nothing was said about
slavery in 1910 outside of the small band o
Birney fanatics. Log cabins, hard cider
coon skins and gold spoons, intermixed with
something about the currency and hare
times, were then the great themes Of discus
sion and political dispute. Trivial and con
temptible as was the electi0neering trash
and slang of 1910, how infinitely preferable
to the pestiferous issues which have beer
made between the North and South in 1860
What patriot would not like to see now 6
national political campaign conducted with
out the appearance of the inevitable negro
Who would not rejoice to see the harmony
and fraternal feeling which characterized
the intercourse of the States in 1910, agar
restored! Politics were then national, hay
ing their adherents in every State of thu
Union-not as now divided upon geograph
ical lines. From 1910 to 1860 We had 6
continued and unnecessary wrangle in thu
United States upon this slavery question
The strands OF our Union have been fritter
ing away with slow and gradual process
1t has implanted the bitterst feeling of sec
tional hate between brethren-betweel
States of the same Union. No bondmaI
has been freed, no benefit has accrued from
it to any human being! Still it is going OF
with accelerated pace, and there are no
wanting prophets who tell US that this Sec
ond decade from 1910 will witness the finale