Freeland tribune. (Freeland, Pa.) 1888-1921, 1899-03-06
CENTURY OF EXPANSION
OUR coUNTRY'S GROWTH FROM
1898 TO 1898.

A comparison of the territorial area
and the national influence of the
United States with those of 1898 will
show the vast material and moral adj
vance which this country has made
IN 100 years. In the historical books
1898 does not figure with any prom
lnence, but in reality it is an impor-
tant landmark in the country's expan-
sion. 1t was just a hundred years
ago that the provisions of the treaty
OF peace with England in 1888 were
fully and finally carried out. For fif-
teen years after that date the United
States, in its endeavors to secure the
boundaries guaranteed in that agree
ment, was obstructed by two nations.
England and Spain. The British held
possession of posts at Oswego, Nj
agara, Detroit and other places in
United States territory on the north
ern frontier, until jays treaty, which,
among other things, provided for their
evacuation, went into operation in
1796, and even then the work of
abandonment was carried on with O
slowness which was exceedingly ex-
asperating to the people of the United
States.
With Spain, however, the United
States had much more trouble in secur-
ing its treaty rights under the agree
ment of 1888 than it had with Eng
land. Then, as now, Spain was slow
in grasping the justice of any demand
by any other nation, and in that par
ticular crisis the situation for this
country was rendered doubly embar-
rassing by the fact that Spain was still
one of the great powers of the earth,
while the United States was only an
insignificant spot on the map and had
no rights which any of the great nations
felt bound to respect. Spain con-
tended that the Florida region which
she gained from England during the
war of the American Revolution, and
which extended west to the Missis-
sippi, went as far north as the mouth
of the Yazoo, about the parallel of
thirty-two degrees north latitude,
which would make the southerly line
of the United States on the Missis-
sippi end at that point.
Both England and the United States,
OIL the other hand, insisted that this
country's southern boundary went
down to latitude thirty-one degrees.
At last the protests and threats of the
United States and Spain's dangers in
Napoleonic wars then under way com
PEELED the latter to accede to the
American demands. Spain did this
in the treaty of San Lorenzo in 1895,
which was ratified by the Senate in
1876, but 1898 arrived before the
Spanish flag went down in Natchez,
the most important town in the terri
tory 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 to all its territory
between the Atlantic and the Missls-
sippi and from the Great Lakes to the
Florida line was definitely confirmed.
Americas situation in 1898, ma
terially and morally, makes 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
Georgia, into the lower end of what
is now the State of Mississippi, or
who crossed the Mississippi River,
would be in a foreign land. We were
surrounded on three sides by power
full nations. England was north of us
as now, and Spain was south and west
of US, as she held Florida, which com
prised the present State of that name
and a strip westward along the south
erly line of what are now the States of
Alabama and Mississippi to the Mis-
sissippi River, and she had all the
region west OF the river. The popu-
lation of the country was about 5, O0O,-
900.
The Louisiana cession and oil the
other annexations were still in the dis
tance. Nobody could have foreseen
at that time that the narrow strip of
populated area east of the ALLIE
ghanies, with the scarcely less di-
minutive stretch of wilderness be-
tween those mountains and the Mis-
sissippi, would ever reach the Gulf of
Mexico and the Pacific. Much less
could anybody have foreseen then that
this country would annex all of Rus
sian America, absorb all the islands of
value in the Gulf of Mexico, and &C.
quire possessions scattered through
the Pacific extending almost to the
continent of Asia. The growth of
America from an area of $1,000
square miles and population of s.
000,0 in 1898 to an area of 3, SOO,-
900 square miles and a population of
100000 in 1898, attended as it 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 friendship is sought
by the most powerful nations of the
earth, represents physical and moral
advancement without parallel in the
annals of the world.
The Presidents Letters.
The President of the United States
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