ORIGINAL TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES 91 



Alleghanies and their faces toward the great river, resolved to 

 march to its mouth and drive the Spaniards into the sea. 



Congress could not deny their plea, and yet was not strong 

 enough to espouse their cause. The need of a closer union in 

 place of "the' rope of sand" which bound the states together 

 became evident. The great Northwest must be saved. A new 

 vision burst upon the American people. "A great and inde- 

 pendent fund of revenue," said Madison, "is passing into the 

 haiuks of a single body of men who can raise troops to an in- 

 definite number and appropriate money to their support for an 

 indefinite period of time. . . . Yet no blame has been 

 whispered, no alarm has been sounded." Since, then, there 

 already existed in the Union a form of sovereign power, why 

 not give it substance? Why not provide the nation with an 

 adequate constitutional basis? Under these circumstances was 

 convoked the Constitutional Convention of 1787. 



The lands between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi were 

 seen to be the key to the continent. They were the old vantage 

 ground of France. Emigration was setting toward them and 

 in a few years they would constitute a mighty empire. They 

 belonged to the people, not to the states, and the common pos- 

 session bound the whole population together in a corporate in- 

 terest. The discernment of this momentous fact created a new 

 patriotism and flooded the intelligence of the people with a new 

 light. Henceforth there were to be two kinds of government to 

 correspond to the two kinds of interest that existed — that of the 

 States, preserving their memories, their traditions, and their or- 

 ganizations, and giving perpetuity to their laws and liberties, 

 and that of the Nation, binding them all together in indissoluble 

 union, preserving the common heritage of their people, giving 

 them fraternity at home and prestige abroad, sweeping away the 

 local barriers to trade and intercourse, gathering the whole 

 people under the folds of one glorious flag, and sheltering the 

 sister states under the spacious dome of a common nationality 

 whose protection should extend over all alike. 



No wonder that the Constitution has been called "the finest 

 specimen of constructive statesmanship that the world has ever 

 seen.'' It has a character of universality about it like the great 

 laws of nature. It was compacted of historic liberties won in a 

 thousand battles and rendered sacred by colonial memories and 

 revolutionary struggles, yet was made for indefinite growth and 

 future expansion, in view of vast stretches of unoccupied wilder- 



