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THE United States of America constitute an essential portion of a great political system, embracing all the cultivated nations of the earth. At a period when the force of moral opinion is rapidly increasing, they have the precedence in the practice and the defence of the equal rights of man. Prosperity follows the execution of even justice; invention is quickened by the freedom of competition, and labor rewarded with unexampled returns. Our ships float on every sea, unite all the races of humanity, and traffic with every continent; the patriarchs of oldest time seem to beckon the commerce of the youngest daughter of civilization towards the cradle of our race. Our diplomatic relations connect us, on terms of equality and honest friendship, with the chief powers of the world; while we avoid entangling participation in their intrigues, their passions, and their wars. Our national resources are developed by an earnest culture of the arts of peace. Mind is free in its activity and its utterance; folly and error are safely tolerated, where reason is left free to combat them. Nor are the constitutions of government compacts unal

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29

EARLY VOYAGES.

COLUMBUS.

[1492

terably fixed; they have the capacity for improvement, adopting whatever changes time and the public will may require. New states are forming in the wilderness; canals intersect our plains and cross our highlands; manufactures prosper along our watercourses; the use of steam on our rivers and railroads annihilates distance by the acceleration of speed. Our population, already giving us a place in the first rank of nations, is doubled in every period of twenty-two or twenty-three years. There is no national debt. Religion, neither persecuted nor paid by the state, is sustained by the regard for public morals and the convictions of an enlightened faith. Intelligence is diffused with unparalleled universality; a free press teems with the choicest productions of all nations and ages. Emigrants, of the most various lineage, crowd to our shores; and the principles of liberty, uniting all interests by the operation of equal laws, blend the discordant elements into harmonious union.

And yet it is but little more than two centuries since the oldest of our states received its first permanent colony. Before that time, the whole territory was an unproductive waste. Throughout its wide extent, the arts had not erected a monument. Its only inhabitants were a few scattered tribes of feeble barbarians, destitute of commerce and of political connection. The axe and the ploughshare were unknown. The soil, which had been gathering fertility from the repose of centuries, was lavishing its strength in magnificent but useless vegetation. In the view of civilization, the immense domain was a solitude.

It is the object of the present work to explain the origin of our country, and to follow the steps by which a favoring Providence called our institutions into being.

The enterprise of Columbus, the most memorable maritime enterprise in the history of the world, formed between Europe and America the communication which will never cease. The national pride of an Icelandic historian has indeed claimed for his ancestors the glory of having discovered the western hemisphere; and

1497.] COLUMBUS. JOHN AND SEBASTIAN CABOT. 3

Danish antiquaries believe that Northmen entered the waters of Rhode Island, and gave the name of Vinland to the south-east coasts of New England. The nation of intrepid mariners, whose voyages extended beyond Iceland and beyond Sicily, could easily have sailed from Greenland to Labrador. No clear, historic evidence makes it certain that they accomplished the passage, far less that they reached the territory of the United States. Imagination had conceived the idea that vast, inhabited regions lay unexplored in the west; and poets had declared that empires beyond the ocean would one day be revealed to the daring navigator. But Columbus deserves the undivided glory of having realized that belief.

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Columbus was a native of Genoa. The commerce of the middle ages, conducted chiefly upon the Mediterranean Sea, had enriched the Italian republics, and had been chiefly engrossed by their citizens. The path for enterprise now lay across the ocean. The states which bordered upon the Atlantic Spain, Portugal, and England-became competitors for the New World and its traffic; but the nation which, by long and successful experience, had become deservedly celebrated for its skill in navigation, continued for a season to furnish the most able maritime commanders. Italians had the glory of making the discoveries, from which Italy derived neither wealth nor power.

In the new career of western adventure, the American continent was first discovered under the auspices of the English, and the coast of the United States by a native of England. The magnificent achievement of Columbus, revealing the wonderful truth, of which the germs may have existed in the imagination of every thoughtful mariner, won the admiration which was due to an enterprise that seemed more divine than human, and kindled in the breasts of the emulous a vehement desire to gain as signal renown in the same career of daring; while the politic king of England desired to share in the large returns which were promised by maritime adventure.

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