34 8 Presidential Addresses 



territory covered by the Louisiana Purchase a por 

 tion was given Statehood within a few years. An 

 other portion has not been admitted to Statehood, 

 although a century has elapsed although doubt 

 less it soon will be. In* each case we showed the 

 practical governmental genius of our race by de 

 vising methods suitable to meet the actual existing 

 needs ; not by insisting upon the application of some 

 abstract shibboleth to all our new possessions alike, 

 no matter how incongruous this application might 

 sometimes be. 



Over by far the major part of the territory, 

 however, our people spread in such numbers during 

 the course of the nineteenth century that we were 

 able to build up State after State, each with exactly 

 the same complete local independence in all matters 

 affecting purely its own domestic interests as in 

 any of the original thirteen States each owing the 

 same absolute fealty to the Union of all the States 

 which each of the original thirteen States also owes 

 and finally each having the same proportional 

 right to its share in shaping and directing the com 

 mon policy of the Union which is possessed by any 

 other State, whether of the original thirteen or not. 



This process now seems to us part of the natural 

 order of things, but it was wholly unknown until 

 our own people devised it. It seems to us a mere 

 matter of course, a matter of elementary right and 

 justice, that in the deliberations of the national rep 

 resentative bodies the representatives of a State 

 which came into the Union but yesterday stand on 



