170 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



feeling which at length took the shape of political union. Sagacious, 

 practical, affable, a man of the people in the best sense of the term, 

 led by official duties hither and thither through the land, brought into 

 busuiess relations with the highest and the humblest functionaries, 

 governors and generals and village postmasters, Franklin cannot but 

 be regarded as an instrument imperceptibly and unconscioush" doing 

 the work of union. His case was, however, an exception to the ordi- 

 nary intercourse among the inhabitants of the several colonies, and as 

 an exception proving what we are apt to lose sight of, that the forma- 

 tion of the Union was a slow, a laborious, and reluctant process. Ha/p- 

 fihj so, for thus it gained a strength which no hasty or premature coa- 

 lition ever could have acquired. The period of transition from the 

 original state of political severalty to the present political combination 

 may be described as a space of time not shorter than a century and a 

 half, making the computation from the first distinct effort at union, the 

 original suggestion in 1637 of that little local coalition styled " The 

 New England Confederacy, " down to the Declaration of Independence, 

 or, if a later date be preferred, when in 1789 the Union was made 

 '■'• more 'perfect'''' by the adoption of the present Constitution. During 

 this long period the processes of combination were going on silently, 

 imperceptibly, seldom thought of^, and never fully appreciated ; ad- 

 vances sometimes made, and then the cause retrograding ; the power 

 of attraction prevailing at one time, and the power of repulsion at an- 

 other ; connexion at one period looked to lor security, and again shua- 

 ned and resisted as concealing danger. 



It is not without interest to observe that there was nothing in the 

 physical character of the country, with all its variety of soil and 

 climate, which presented impediments in the formation of the Union. 

 There was no natural frontier at any part of tiie territory occupied by 

 the settlements which were for a long time limited to the country ex^ 

 tending from New Hampshire to Georgia, and bounded by the ocean 

 and tlie first great range of mountains. 



Rivers flowins: north and south are thought to be most influential 

 upon civilization, perhaps by connecting the climate and soil of differ- 

 ent latitudes. When our territor}^ was expanded to receive the whole 

 valley of the Mississippi, we can look back to the long and difficult ne- 

 gotiations respecting the navigation of that river, when its banks were 

 held by different powers, as indicating that Nature fitted it for a great 

 highway for one people, and to bind them strongly together for ever. 



No bay or river interposed a dangerous or difficult navigation ; indeed, 

 the great rivers, the Delaware, the Susquehannah, the Hudson, and 

 the Connecticut, each flowing through the territory of several colonies, 

 served by their free navigation to fiicilitate the intercourse of the colo- 

 nists. There was no such mountain intersection as would cut oft' by 

 a natural barrier one portion of the country from another, such as has 

 been observed in Italy, where only a few years ago a Neapolitan natu- 

 ralist, making an excursion to one of the highest of the central Apenr 

 nines, found medicinal plants growing in the greatest profusion which 

 the Neapolitans w^ere regularly in the habit of importing fiom other 

 countries, as no one suspected their existence within their own kingdom. 



Looking to the physical character of the continent in relation to tlie 



