spread before her the two oceans, and taught her to traverse them with
a firm and masterful mien, no longer

As one who in a lonely road doth walk in fear and dread.

We have created cities upon her havens, Parliaments in her capitals,
and stronger hearts and quicker hands in her villages. No community on
her varied surface but is the better for America. That our people and
their labors have done it all it would be absurd to say; but the Old
World's progress in the period under review can be but very partially
accounted for by any internal force of its own. None of its rulers or
peoples adventure a reform of any kind without a preliminary, if often
only a half-conscious, glance of inquiry westward. Collectively as
members of a European republic of nations, and internally each
within itself, they have in this way learned, after many recalcitrant
struggles, to recognize and respect local independence. Municipal law
has gained new life. The commune has become an entity everywhere, and
the nations which it informs have established the right to readjust or
recast their constitutions without being hounded down as disturbers
of the peace. The contribution of the American Union to such results
would earn it honor at the hands of history were it to sink into
nothing to-morrow. Had no such tangible fruits hitherto ripened, some
portion of such honor would still accrue to it for having shown that a
people may grow from a handful to an empire without hereditary rulers,
without a privileged class, without a state Church, without a standing
army, without tumult in the largest cities and without stagnant
savagery in the remotest wilds.