Page:Modern Eloquence - Volume 1.djvu/90
tucky, which subsequently became Territories, and later States.
The magic of a name has sometimes obscured this significant phase of our history. We have called our colonies Territories, but colonies they remain in the truest sense of the word, until elevated to the dignity of sovereign States. At all times their legitimate claims upon our consideration have vitally affected our policy. It was the colonies in Kentucky and Tennessee which led our country to claim the territory to the Mississippi as the true western boundary of our country. It was again the colonies in the valley of the Mississippi which led Jefferson to purchase Louisiana in order to preserve forever for the American people the great pathway of commerce, the Mississippi River. It was the colonies in Florida that led to the purchase of that State; it was the colonies in Texas which, revolting against Mexico and forming an independent State, were later annexed to the American Republic; it was, again, the colonies in Oregon which compelled an unwilling Congress to remember their existence, and which saved that noble country between the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific to the Union. No argument against territorial expansion can be so false to our history as that which asserts that we lack experience in colonization. Sprung, as we are, from the teeming womb of England, we could not be other than a colonizing power, if we would.
Let us not be fearful as to our manifest destiny. Our Republic, like young Siegfried in the old Teutonic legend, has fashioned at the flaming forge of war the magic sword of the world's supremacy. The Treaty of Paris ended one empire and commenced another, which in area, numbers, power and influence, will exceed that of Alexander or Cæsar, Charlemagne or Napoleon. To-day the Republic is the true centre of the world, with the Occident on our right and the Orient on our left. Let us have faith that the Ruler of Nations, who has led us thus far, will give us no problem too great for our solution, and no work too great for our achievement. To grasp faintly the future of this country is to bewilder and exhaust the imagination. The past is but the "happy prologue to the swelling act of an imperial theme." To-day, as never before, we face the world as