NATIONAL GROWTH AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 197 



those forces and conditions to which the birth of the nation was 

 due. With the close of the Revolution, the coastwise colonists 

 forged their weapons into implements of peace or turned them 

 against savage tribes ; ambitious sons of hardy sires forced the 

 forests, made conquest of the wilderness, and began the devel- 

 opment of a riparian commerce which required the freedom of 

 the rivers, especially the Mississippi ; year by year the material 

 of commerce increased with the extension of agriculture and 

 the development of new industries to which the hard-handed 

 and strong-headed settlers instinctively turned ; and, under the 

 ceaseless stimulus of individual freedom, each generation grew 

 stronger than the last and sprang more readily toward conquest 

 over lower nature — or over alien nation that might stand in the 

 way. The sons of the sires who had broken Britain's rule were 

 not to be balked by the feeble claims of Spain, or the diplo- 

 matic demands of once-allied France; the land for which their 

 fathers bled, with all the privileges thereunto appertaining, were 

 theirs by treaty right in clear conscience and common sense ; 

 and twenty thousand of them rose in arms to defend this right 

 with lives enriched by the blood of all the best of mankind 

 and the ripened knowledge of generations. The popular move- 

 ment of the time proves that the strong character inherited by 

 the colonists and strengthened through their stirring activities 

 had gained still further strength through the sublime exercise of 

 subjugating a vast wilderness. History will always credit to 

 Thomas Jefferson and Robert R. Livingston the noble national 

 achievement consummated in the acquisition of the fertile plains 

 and priceless rivers of Louisiana territory ; but the student of 

 moral forces can never forget the agency of those American 

 citizens, heirs to the divine right of kings, who exercised their 

 prerogatives so efficiently and so wisely in 1803. Oregon terri- 

 tory, with the rich states into which it has grown, must always 

 stand as a monument to Jefferson's sagacity and foresight ; but 

 the splendid states into which Louisiana was reconstructed form 

 a still nobler monument to American citizenship — they were 

 acquired by the people themselves for the use of the people 

 forever. 



The acquisition of Louisiana and Oregon reflected a national 

 character made up of individual characters shaped during a 

 hundred generations ; at the same time it proved a power in fur- 

 ther shapement of both personal and national character. Con- 

 fronted by new problems and enlarged fields of activity, the 



