SENATOR PLATT, OF CONNECTICUT 117 287 291 298 299 305 315 ORANGE PICKING SCENE AT ORMOND, FLORIDA 347 352 MC DERMOTT FALLS AND GRINNELL MOUNTAIN 359 363 OLD CREOLE CEMETERY, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA "DOWN UPON THE SUWANEE RIVER," FLORIDA 367 370 IN JAIL FOR THE "CRIME" OF OBEYING THE FOURTHI SU of America." CHAPTER I UDDENLY a new "World Power" has arisen upon the horizon of nations. That power is the "United States Suddenly, we say, even if we date from the very hour of its birth; for it is but a little more than one hundred years since the nation known by this name began to exist. Scanning the history of nations in the past, a hundred years is not, comparatively speaking, a very long period. What nation ever made any very great impression upon the world in its first hundred years? Take Rome, the great iron Colossus, which for ages bestrode the nations of the earth, what was Rome when but a hundred years of age?Scarcely known outside the few provinces of Italy which then composed its uncertain territory. It has not been so with this giant which has arisen in a new world. It preempted its own territory, by itself and for itself, out of savagery and chaos, and now waves its imperial banner, and lustily shouts its notes of challenge in no uncertain tones to the proudest and strongest national combinations of mankind. Some of the nations which have been the leading nations of the earth are beginning to stagnate and decay. Statesmen speak of them as "decaying nations," but the eyes of all na tions now turn with and burned into their souls an undying love of civil and religious liberty. Dominated by these principles, they turned their eyes to the New World, and struck out for freedom to govern themselves as wisdom and experience might dictate, and to worship God according to his word and their own consciences. These earnest people builded their altars along our Atlantic coast. The noble principles upon which they took their stand, and their generous spirit in opening their doors, and sending an invitation to the oppressed of all lands to share with them freely in the enjoyment of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," attracted associates from every direction, as recruits flocked to the standard of David in the cave of Adullam. The result is a marvel; for now, in the place of the first few sparse settlements, a mighty nation, with a vast expanse OUR COUNTRY THE MARVEL OF NATIONS 21 of territory, stretches from Plymouth Rock on the east to the Golden Gate on the west, and from regions arctic on the north to regions nearly torrid on the south, embracing more leagues of habitable land than Rome ruled over in its palmiest days. The government thuis begotten and reared here holds a position of invincible independence and glory among the nations of the earth.1 Less than a century and a half ago, in 1776, with about three millions of people, the United States became an inde Columbus Landing on the Shores of the New World pendent government. According to the census of 1912 it now has a population of over ninety-five and one-half million people, and a territory, including Alaska and its island possessions, of more than three and a half million square miles. Russia alone exceeds this nation in these particulars, hav In a speech at the "Centennial Dinner" at the Westminster Palace Hotel, London, July 4, 1876, J. P. Thompson, LL. D., speaking of the United States, said: "They have proved the possibility of free, popular government upon a scale to which the Roman Republic of five hundred years was but a province."- The United States as a Nation, p. xvii. |