Manhood and Statehood 205 



through the dense forests from the tide-water region 

 to the crests of the Alleghanies. But by the time the 

 Alleghanies were reached, about at the moment 

 when our national life began, the movement had 

 gained wonderful momentum. Thenceforward it 

 advanced by leaps and bounds, and the frontier 

 pushed westward across the continent with ever- 

 increasing rapidity until the day came when it van 

 ished entirely. Our greatest statesmen have always 

 been those who believed in the nation who had 

 faith in the power of our people to spread until they 

 should become the mightiest among the peoples of 

 the world. 



Under any governmental system which was known 

 to Europe, the problem offered by the westward 

 thrust, across a continent, of so masterful and lib 

 erty-loving a race as ours would have been insoluble. 

 The great civilized and colonizing races of antiquity, 

 the Greeks and the Romans, had been utterly unable 

 to devise a scheme under which when their race 

 spread it might be possible to preserve both national 

 unity and local and individual freedom. When a 

 Hellenic or Latin city sent off a colony, one of two 

 things happened. Either the colony was kept in po 

 litical subjection to the city or state of which it was 

 an offshoot, or else it became a wholly independent 

 and alien, and often a hostile, nation. Both systems 

 were fraught with disaster. With the Greeks race 



