Evening star., 1898-12-22
A STRIKING CONTRAST.
COuntry's Situation Today Com
pared With That of Is9S.

From the ST Louis Globe Democrat.
! A comparison of the territorial area and
the national influence of the United States
| with those of 119S will show the vast ma
terial and moral advance which this coun-
try has made in 100 years. In the historical
books 11!rS does not figure with any prom
inence, but in reality it IS an important
landmark in the country's expansion. Il
was just a hundred years ago that the pro-
visions of the treaty of peace with England
| in 1873 were fully and finally carried out
For fifteen years after that dat the United
States, in its endeavorS to secure the
boundaries guaranteed in that agreement
was obs:ructed by two nations, England
and Spain. The British held possession of
posts at Oswego, Niagara. Detroit and other
places in United States territory on the
northern frontier, until Jays treaty, which,
among other things, provided for their
evacuation, went into operation in 1876, and
even then the work of abandonment was
carried with a slowness which was eX-
ceedingly eXasperatng to the people of the
United States.
With Spain, however, the United States
had much more trouble in securing its
treaty rights under the agreement of 1888
than it had with England Then, as now,
Spain slow in grasping the justice OF
any demand by any other nation, and in
that particular crisis the situation for this
country was rendered doubly embarrassing
by the fact that Spain was still one of the
>
States was only an insignificant spot on the
map and had no rights which any of the
great nations felt bound to respect Spain
contended that the Florida region which
she gained from England during the war
of the American revolution, and which ex-
tended west to the Mississippi, went far
north the mouth OF the YaZoo, about the
parallel of 81 degree north latitude, which
would make the southerly line of the
United States on the Mississippi end at
that point.
Both England and the United States. on
the other hand, insisted that this country's
southern boundary went down to latitude
81 degrees. At last the protests and threats
of the United States and Spains dangers
in the Napoleonic wars then under way
compelled the latter to accede 10 the Amer
iCan demands. Spain did this in the treaty
of San Lorenzo in 1875. which was ratified
by the Senate in 1896 but 11aS arrived be-
fore the Spanish flag went down in Natchez,
the most important town in the territory
in dispute, and the stars and stripes went
up. Then, fifteen years after the treaty of
independence, and just hundred years
ago, the title of the United States 10 all
its territory between the Atlantic and the
Mississippi and from the great lakes to the
Florida line was definitely confirmed.
Americas situation in 1888 materially and
morally, makes a striking contrast with
that of 1898. On the day when Gayoso's
forces lowered their flag in Natchez and
sailed down TO New Orleans. the person
who stepped below the southerly line of
the state of Mississippi, or who crossed the
Mississippi river, would be in foreign
land. We were surrounded on three sides
by powerful nations. England was north
of US, as now, and Spain was south and
west of U.S. she held Florida, which COM
prised the present state of that name and a
strip westward along the southerly line of
what are now the states of Alabama and
Mississippi TO the Mississippi river, and she
had all the region west of the river. The
population of the country was about $780,
800
The Louisiana cession and all the other
anneXations were still IN the distance. No
body could have foreseen at that time that
the narrow strip of populated area east of
the Alleghanies, with the scarcely less di-
minutiVe stretch Of wilderness between
those mountains and the Mississippi, would
ever reach the Gulf of Mexico and the
Pacific. Much less could anybody have
foreseen then that this country would an
mex all of Russian America, absorb all of
the islands of value in the Gulf of Mexico
and acquire possessions scattered through
the Pacific extending almost to the conti-
nent of Asia. The growth of America from
an area of $4,000 square miles and popu-
lation of 5,0D,000 in 1I9S to an area of 3d.
S0O0O0 square miles and a population Of
So O0D, coo I'm 1895 attended as ii has been by
a rise from position in which its enmity
had no menace for even the feeblest of
foreign states to one in which its friend
ship is sought by the most powerful nations |
of the earth, represents a physical and
moral advancement without parallel in the |
annals of the world.