Meanwhile, partly by natural increase and partly by voluntary
immigration from Europe, our population has risen from 3,000,000 to
nearly 40,000,000; the number of States and Territories united under
the Constitution has been augmented from thirteen to forty-seven; the
development of internal wealth and power has kept pace with political
expansion; we have occupied in part and peopled the vast interior of
the continent; we have bound the Pacific to the Atlantic by a chain of
intervening States and organized Territories; we have delivered the
Republic from the anomaly and the ignominy of domestic servitude; we
have constitutionally fixed the equality of all races and of all men
before the law; and we have established, at the cost of a great civil
war--a cost, however, not beyond the value of such a result--the
indissoluble national unity of the United States.
In all these marked stages of national progress, from the Declaration
of Independence to the recent amendments of the Constitution, it is
impossible not to perceive a providential series and succession of
events, intimately attached one to the other, and possessed of definite
character as a whole, whatever incidental departures from such
uniformity may have marked, or seemed to mark, our foreign policy under
the influence of temporary causes or of the conflicting opinions of
statesmen.
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