GEO. M. ROBESON, _Secretary of the Navy_.
SEVENTH ANNUAL MESSAGE.
EXECUTIVE MANSION, _December 7, 1875_.
_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:
In submitting my seventh annual message to Congress, in this centennial
year of our national existence as a free and independent people, it
affords me great pleasure to recur to the advancement that has been made
from the time of the colonies, one hundred years ago. We were then a
people numbering only 3,000,000. Now we number more than 40,000,000.
Then industries were confined almost exclusively to the tillage of the
soil. Now manufactories absorb much of the labor of the country.
Our liberties remain unimpaired; the bondmen have been freed from
slavery; we have become possessed of the respect, if not the friendship,
of all civilized nations. Our progress has been great in all the
arts--in science, agriculture, commerce, navigation, mining, mechanics,
law, medicine, etc,: and in general education the progress is likewise
encouraging. Our thirteen States have become thirty-eight, including
Colorado (which has taken the initiatory steps to become a State), and
eight Territories, including the Indian Territory and Alaska, and
excluding Colorado, making a territory extending from the Atlantic to
the Pacific.
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