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Show ,, The Great West j 5 THOMAS JEFFERSON bought Louisiana " fl from Napoleon; he sent LoavIs and Clark to i Rj explore it; but even Jefferson had no idea ,' xj that the Republic would extend to the Pacific. f' Of course the revolution that steam, on land and ' M sea, would make, never dawned upon his vision. The Pacific coast in his day was a year distant ' H by the shortest route, three years distant by I H ship, and the idea of one country extending so '' Bj far that a law passed at the capital would be a 1 year and a half or two years in reaching the V B people, was not to be considered. In 1812 he ' H wrote a letter to John Jacob Astor, in which, J? Hj referring to the commencement of a settlement B by Astor on the Columbia, and declaring the L H gratification with which he looked forward to the j$ I time when its descendants should have spread II I through the whole length of the coast, he adds: fi H "Covering it with free and Independent Ameri- J; I cans, unconnected with us but by the ties of S M blood and Interest, and employing like us the p Iffi rights of self-government." The next year, 1813, , jgj H ho wrote again to Mr. Astor, characterizing the jf I settlement as "the germ of a great, free, and In- J) H dependent empire on that side of our continent." 1 M It was different with John Adams, who saw H our Republic coincident with the North American K continent. But as late as 1848, after railroads i! B were a success in the East and steamships had begun to venture out upon the deep sea, in a 1 speech in Fanueil Hall, Daniel Webster declared I H that the west coast could not be governed from jfi Europe or from the Atlantic side of the conti- V. M nent, and continuing said: li m "And now let me ask if there is any sensible "1 I man in the whole United States who will say for ; D a moment that when fifty or a hundred thousand ,) 8 persons of this descrlptioxi ( Americans mostly, r but all Anglo Saxons) shall find themselves on K the shores of the Pacific ocean, they will long H f' consent to be under the rule of the American m t Congress, or the British Parliament. They will In J I 4-aiso the standard for themselves and they I f ought to do it." The great expounder of the iij Constitution had no prophetic vision. The old j I belief that the East and West were separated by h Jl I 4 valueless and barbarous wastes, still clung to HB 'Hi hIm- No vision of what was to be ever crossed B J ! f his eyes. B I I But the generation that settled that West H m I grew Up with that same Webster's words ringing H P in tholr ears: "Liberty and Union, one and in- H 'MJj I separable' and they had no thought of any new K (!i I allegiance Their fathers' graves were in the H l! y East, all the glorious traditions of the Republic B ijjfj i were theirs: their mothers and sweetliearts were B aa f there; the space that separated them "only made H j't g the dear old land of their birth dearer, and B jjt '" mountains and rolling oceans were impotent to H Ttl I break the tie. And see what they have wrought. H M j While subduing and peopling the wilderness, B I they supplied to the East the treasure which B if onabled the East to grow rich beyond its wildest B niigjjij di earns. That treasure gave to what the men of B jw 1 the East produced a value which left them a B jy! profit; it gave them a credit which enabled the B ') ' i East to so equip itself as to utilize its sluraber- B ' ing resources. It gave to the East an unearned B (' t ) increment richer than any Eastern empire save B i j Great Britain; in the East in sixty years it has B Arji f wrought a transformation which the nations of B !; J the old world struggled in vain for a thousand B u' years to realize. B j, fl All the time, too, the west has been true to B ! & all the traditions and truths of the past of our B I I country and has added nine stars and exceeding B ? . glory to her flag. Our thought is that the great B 'j 1 West has a right to be a little proud of her sixty B h h years of endeavor, and that she has given as B J 1 much splendor back to the Republic as has been B ,$ It leficcted upon her. ! 11 - |