The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-05-01

a practical nation we have never tried to Iorce on any section of our new territory an unsuitable form of government mere because It was suitable for another section under different conditions. Of the territory covered by the Louisiana Pur- chase a. portion, was given statehood with m few years. Another portion has not peen admitted to statehood, although a century has elapsed--although doubtless 1t soon Will be. In each case we showed the practical governmental genius of our race by devising methods suitable to meet the actual existing needs; not by insisting upon the application of some abstract shihboleth to all our new nosseSsions aiike. no mater how incongruous this ap- pic ation might sometimes be.
 over py Tar the major part of the ter such numbers during the course of the nineteenth century that we were able to build up State after State, each with ex- actly the same complete local indepen- oence m 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 thir- teen states also owes-and finally each having the same proportional right to its snare in shaping and directing the com mon policy of the Union which is DOS sessed by any other State. whether of the original Thirteen or not.
 rms process now seems to us part of the natural order of things. but iii was wholly unknown until our own people de- V1sed 1t. It seems to us q mere matter Of course, matter of elementary right and justice. that in the deliberations of the national representative bodies the representatives of State which came in to the Union but yesterday stand on a Iootlng or exact and entire equality with those of the Commonwealths whose sons oi ce signed the Declaration of Indepen- dence. But this way of looking at the matter Is purely modern, and in it's origin purely American. When Washington du- ring his presidency saw new States come into the Union on q footing of complete equality with the old every European na- ton which had colonies still administered them as dependencies, and every other mother-country treated the colonist not as self-governing, equal but as a sub ject.
 Accepted as the Rule.
 The process which we began has since been followed by all the great peoples who were capable both of expansion and of self-government, and now the world accepts 1t as the natural process, as the rule; but century and a quarter ago 1t was not merely exceptional: 1t was unknown.
 This, then, is the great historical sig ni1cance of the movement of continental expansion in which the Louisiana Pur- chase was the most striking single achievement. It stands out in marked fehef even among the feats of nation oA pAOHetES, a nation whose people have rom the beginning been picked out by a process of natural selection from among the most enterprising individuals of the nations or Western Europe. The aequisi- ton Of the territory is a credit to the broad and far-stghtad Statesmanship of the great statesmen to whom 1t was immediately due ana above all to the aggressi 'e and maste 'f.Il cnasecter of the hariy pioneer folk to whose restless energy these states nen gave expression and direction. whom they followed rather than led. The history of the land com prised within the limits of the Purchase is an epitome of the entire history of our people. Within these limits we have gradually built up State after State until now they many times over surpass in wealth. in population, and in many-sided development. the original thirteen States as they were when their delegates met in the Continental Congress. The people of these States have shown themselves mighty in war v~th their fellow-man. and mighty in strength to tame the rugged wilderness. They could not thus have conquered the forest and the prairie. the mountain and the desert, had they not possessed the great fighting virtues, the qualities which enable a people to over come the forces of hostile men and hostile nature. On tho other hand, they could not have used alright their conquest had they not in addition possessed the qual- ities Of self-mastery and self-restraint. the power Of acting in combination with their fellows. the power of yielding obe- dience to the law and of building up an orderly civilization. Courage and har- dihood are indispensable virtues in a peo- pie. but the people which possesses no others can never rise high in the scale either of power or of culture. Great peo- ples must have in addition the govern mental capacity which comes only when individuals fully recognize their duties to one another and to the whole body polite, and are able to join together in feats of constructive statesmanship and of honest and effective administration. The old pioneer days are gone, with their roughness and their hardship, their incredible toll and their wild half-savage romance. But the need for the pioneer virtues remains the same as ever. The peculiar frontier conditions have vanish ed; but the manliness and stalwart hardi- hood of the frontiersmen can be given even freer scope under the conditions sur rounding the complex industrialism of the present day. In this great region acquired for our people under the Presidency of Jefferson this region stretching from the