In every problem of history there are two main factors, variously stated
as heredity and environment, man and his geographic conditions, the
internal forces of race and the external forces of habitat. Now the
geographic element in the long history of human development has been
operating strongly and operating persistently. Herein lies its
importance. It is a stable force. It never sleeps. This natural
environment, this physical basis of history, is for all intents and
purposes immutable in comparison with the other factor in the
problem--shifting, plastic, progressive, retrogressive man.

[Sidenote: Persistent effect of remoteness.]

History tends to repeat itself largely owing to this steady, unchanging
geographic element. If the ancient Roman consul in far-away Britain
often assumed an independence of action and initiative unknown in the
provincial governors of Gaul, and if, centuries later, Roman Catholicism
in England maintained a similar independence towards the Holy See, both
facts have their cause in the remoteness of Britain from the center of
political or ecclesiastical power in Rome. If the independence of the
Roman consul in Britain was duplicated later by the attitude of the
Thirteen Colonies toward England, and again within the young Republic by
the headstrong self-reliance, impatient of government authority, which
characterized the early Trans-Allegheny commonwealths in their
aggressive Indian policy, and led them to make war and conclude treaties
for the cession of land like sovereign states; and if this attitude of
independence in the over-mountain men reappeared in a spirit of
political defection looking toward secession from the Union and a new
combination with their British neighbor on the Great Lakes or the
Spanish beyond the Mississippi, these are all the identical effects of