The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1903-05-05
| WONDERFUL PAGEANT
DROWNED IN SEA OF DUST
r..ooaI Dedication at St, Louis of the B1tild.
ings Of the Louisiana Purchase
Exposition.

to a foot of it. It's acquisition could in
no sense be treated as rounding out any
existing claims. When we acquired it
we made evident once for all that con-
Sciously and of set purpose we had en-
parked on a career of expansion, that we
had taken our place mons those daring
and hardy nations who risk much with
the hope and desire of winning high
position among the great powers of the
earth. AS is SO often the case in nature,
the law of development of a living or
ganism showed itself in its actual work
ings to be wiser than the wisdom of the
wisest.
This work of expansion was by far
the greatest work of our people during
the years that interviewed between the
adoption of the Constitution and the
outbreak of the Civil War. There Wafe
other questions of real moment and i'm
portance, and there were many which at
the time seemed such to those engaged in
answering them; but the greatest feat O.
our forefathers of those generations was
the deed Of the men who, with pack train
OF wagon train, on horseback, on foot, or
by boat upon the waters. pushed the
frontier ever westward across the con-
tinent.
Never before had the world seen the
kind Of national expansion which gave
our people all that part of the American
continent lying west of the thirteen origl-
nal States; the greatest landmarks in
which was the Louisiana Purchase. Our
triumph in this process of expansion was
indissolubly bound up with the success
of our peculiar kind of federal govern
ment; and this success has been so CON-
plete that because of it's very complete
ness We now sometimes fail to appre-
ciate not only the all-inportance, but the
tremendous difficulty of the problem with
which our nation was originally faced.
we expanded by carving the wilder
ness into territories and out of these
territories building new States when once
they had received as permanent settlers
a sufficient number of our own people.
Being a practical nation we have never
tried to force On any section of our new
territory an unsuitable form of govern
ment merely because 1t was suitable for
another section under different conditions.
OF the territory covered by the Louisiana
Purchase a portion was given statehood
within a few years. Another portion has
net been admitted to statehood, although
a century has elapsed-although doubt
less it soon will be. In each case we
showed the practical governmental genius
OF our race by devising methods suitable
! l IIttI ILC dCIud1 SAloblIS ICSbo, nv Ny
insisting upon the application of some
abstract shibboleth to all our new pos
! sessions alike, no matter how incongru-
Gus this application might sometimes be.
'Oter by far the major part of the
territory, however, our people spread in
such numbers during the course of the
nineteenth century that we were able to
build up State after State, each with
exactly the same complete local indie
pendence in all matters affecting purely
! its own domestic interests as in any OF
the original thirteen States-each owing
the same absolute fealty to the Union OF
: all the States which each of the original
thirteen States also owes-and finally
) each having the same proportional right
to its share in shaping and directing tie
common policy of the Union, which s
possessed by any other State, whether
of the original Thirteen Or not.
9TH old pioneer days are gone, With
their ~rOughness and their hardship, their
incredible toll and their wild half-savase
romance. But the need for the pioneer
virtues remains the same as ever.
eve have every right to take a just
pride in the great deeds of our fore
! fathers; but we show ourselves unworthy
to be their descendants if we make what
they did an excuse for our lying supine
instead of an incentive to the eHOfI 10
show ourselves by our acts worthy OF
them. Now, in 1903, In the altered con-
ditions. we must meet the changed ard
! changing problems with the spirit shown
by the men who, in 1903, and in the sub
sequent years gained, explored, con-
uuered and settled this vast territory,
then a desert, now filled with thriving
and populouS States
! Following the Presidents address THE
chorus rendered Unfold Ye Portals