182 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



America for every class, not class interest or separate class action. We 

 can never make a great success of this democratic experiment unless 

 each class will undertake its interdependence upon the other class — the 

 farmer, the laborer, the city man, the mechanic, the agriculturalist, all 

 interdependent and all marching on to a great destiny in the life of the 

 vv^orld. 



I remember another daring thing that this country did. In 1803 Na- 

 poleon was engaged in a great war with England, and we sent commis- 

 sioners over to France to do what? To acquire the mouths of the Miss- 

 issippi river; to acquire a limited section of the Louisiana territory. 

 Livingstone and Monroe were the commissioners, and when they got 

 over there Napoleon gave them an opportunity, against their instruc- 

 tions, to acquire how much land? Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, 

 Minnesota, North and South Dakota, the greater part of Kansas, Ne- 

 braska, part of Oklahoma, the greater part of Colorado, nearly all of 

 Montana, and a large part of Idaho — one million square miles, at 2V2 

 cents per acre — $15,000,000. Fifteen million dollars is less than the valu- 

 ation of almost every county represented here tonight. What did those 

 two commissioners do? Here were those two men clear across the 

 ocean — in those days we were without cables, rams, remember — and what 

 did they do? They saw the opportunity to secure one-million square 

 miles for $15,000,000, and they took it. And what did Jefferson do at 

 that time — the strict constructionist who believed that the federal gov- 

 ernment had only certain expressed rights and that all the rest of the 

 rights were in the states — he said, "We will shut up the constitution and 

 accept the purchase of one million square miles for $15,000,000." Now 

 men who had not lived the unfettered, free life of America never would 

 have taken that sort of chance. It is to the eternal credit of Livingstone 

 and Monroe, and to the credit of Jefferson, that that great purchase was 

 consummated out here in the Mississippi Valley, this soil upon which we 

 sit tonight. That was another evidence of the initiative and daring of the 

 American spirit. 



I will come on very rapidly, up into the era of the Civil War. Here 

 were two great sections of America, both of them determined, both of 

 them free, both of them having this same American spirit. One of them 

 said, "We have this great institution of slavery in the South, and we do 

 not propose to give it up even if it severs the Union." But there was in 

 this country at that time a wonderful man who carried this country thru 

 the fires of that conflict, and that great man said, in effect: "If I can save 

 the Union with slavery, I will save it; if I can save the Union without 

 slavery, I will save it; the question of slavery is not my end; my end 

 now is the saving of the Union, and to this end we dedicate all the man- 

 power and the moral power and the wealth of this great Northland." 

 There were two groups of men, equally daring in spirit, back of one a 

 great righteous principle, men who believed in perpetuating this exper- 

 iment on American soil, and the man who is armed with justice, tho he 

 might be met by another equally powerful, will be victorious, as has been 

 shown in that war. Justice is the spirit of God working in the affairs of 

 mankind. As so we proved that our country was strong enough to pro- 

 tect not only the liberties of its people, but to preserve its own integrity. 



