Since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to
twelve. A territory bounded by the Mississippi has been extended
from sea to sea. New States have been admitted to the Union in
numbers nearly equal to those of the first Confederation. Treaties
of peace, amity, and commerce have been concluded with the
principal dominions of the earth. The people of other nations,
inhabitants of regions acquired not by conquest, but by compact,
have been united with us in the participation of our rights and
duties, of our burdens and blessings. The forest has fallen by the
ax of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage
of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. The
dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the
invention of our artists. Liberty and law have marched hand in
hand. All the purposes of human association have been accomplished
as effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at
a cost little exceeding in a whole generation the expenditure of
other nations in a single year.

Such is the unexaggerated picture of our condition under a
Constitution founded upon the republican principle of equal
rights. To admit that this picture has its shades is but to say
that it is still the condition of men upon earth. From evil--
physical, moral, and political--it is not our claim to be exempt.
We have suffered sometimes by the visitation of Heaven through
disease; often by the wrongs and injustice of other nations, even
to the extremities of war; and, lastly, by dissensions among
ourselves--dissensions perhaps inseparable from the enjoyment of
freedom, but which have more than once appeared to threaten the
dissolution of the Union, and with it the overthrow of all the