And State Papers 347 



States to the original thirteen. Excellent people 

 in the East viewed this initial expansion of the 

 country with great alarm. Exactly as during the 

 colonial period many good people in the mother- 

 country thought it highly important that settlers 

 should be kept out of the Ohio Valley in the interest 

 of the fur companies, so after we had become a 

 Nation many good people on the Atlantic Coast felt 

 grave apprehension lest they might somehow be 

 hurt by the westward growth of the Nation. These 

 good people shook their heads over the formation 

 of States in the fertile Ohio Valley which now forms 

 part of the heart of our Nation; and they declared 

 that the destruction of the Republic had been ac 

 complished when through the Louisiana Purchase 

 we acquired nearly half of what is now that same 

 Republic's present territory. Nor was their feeling 

 unnatural. Only the adventurous and the far-seeing 

 can be expected heartily to welcome the process of 

 expansion, for the nation that expands is a nation 

 which is entering upon a great career, and with 

 greatness there must of necessity come perils which 

 daunt all save the most stout-hearted. 



We expanded by carving the wilderness into Ter 

 ritories and out of these Territories building new 

 States when once they had received as permanent 

 settlers a sufficient number of our own people. Being 

 a practical Nation we have never tried to force on 

 any section of our new territory an unsuitable form 

 of government merely because it was suitable for 

 another section under different conditions. Of the 



