CHAPTER I 



GREATNESS BY CONTINENTAL CONQUEST 



THE economic greatness of the United States is the 

 fruit of a policy of peaceful conquest over the resources 

 of a virgin continent. "Without this great item of raw 

 material, the finished product which the world acknowl- 

 edges in the industrial America of to-day would have 

 been impossible. 



The true career of the American people as a race of 

 empire-builders dates not from the founding of James- 

 town, New Amsterdam, and Plymouth, but from the 

 surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown and the subsequent 

 inauguration of George Washington as the first President 

 of the United States. The early settlers were merely 

 European sentinels standing guard over a treasure of 

 continental magnitude which they neither compre- 

 hended nor appreciated. The tobacco-raisers of Vir- 

 ginia, the fur-traders of New York, and the religious 

 enthusiasts of New England had no conception of a 

 national destiny or mission. They looked backward to 

 the civilization whence they had come, rather than for- 

 ward to the conquest and subjugation of the mightier 

 empire on whose eastern shores they had set their reluc- 

 tant feet. 



Only at the close of the successful war for indepen- 



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