Mid-Atlantic states

“ Although in 1830 the North Atlantic States numbered between three and four times as many people as the Middle West, yet in those two decades the Middle West made an actual gain of several hundred thousand more than did the old section. Counties in the newer states rose from a few hundred to ten or fifteen thousand people in the space of less than five years. ”

“ Much of the land on their slopes is rich and accessible, and all of their fertile slopes, coves and small valleys have been long since occupied.
[177] I state these facts to show that in addition to natural causes the States bordering on the Atlantic in the same number of degrees of north latitude, as will more fully appear, must continue to have the dominating power in the lower house of Congress. The three States bordering on the Pacific Ocean extend over sixteen degrees of north latitude. ”

“ When I view the Atlantic States, procuring for those on the eastern waters of the Mississippi friendly instead of hostile neighbors on its western waters, I do not view it as an Englishman would the procuring future blessings for the French nation, with whom he has no relations of blood or affection. The future inhabitants of the Atlantic and Mississippi States will be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering establishments. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. ”

“ The ‘Maritime Provinces’ on the Atlantic coast include New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward’s Island, and Newfoundland. Geographically they may be regarded as a north-easterly prolongation of the New England system. Unitedly they include an area of at least 86,000 square miles, and are capable of supporting a larger population than that at present existing in the United States or Great Britain. ”

“ It resided almost wholly on the Atlantic coast
from Maine to Florida. Not more than five per cent of it was west of the
mountains. The line of inner settlement, now farther, now nearer, ran at
an average distance from the coast of two hundred and fifty-five miles. ”

“ When these States were colonies, and for a long time after the adoption of the Constitution of the United States, the shores of the great lakes of the North, above and beyond the ocean tides, were as yet almost uninhabited, except by savages. The necessities of commerce and the progress of steam navigation had not as yet called for the exercise of admiralty jurisdiction, except on the ocean border of the Atlantic States. ”

“ Until our battle fleet is much larger than at present it should never be split into detachments so far apart that they could not in event of emergency be speedily united. Our coast line is on the Pacific just as much as on the Atlantic. The interests of California, Oregon, and Washington are as emphatically the interests of the whole Union as those of Maine and New York, of Louisiana and Texas. The battle fleet should now and then be moved to the Pacific, just as at other times it should be kept in the Atlantic. ”

“ There are no large islands off these coasts, Long Island (q. v.) being the most considerable. Next in importance come the islands off Maine and Massachusetts and the Santa Barbara group off California. Alaska has many large islands. Cuba is but 90 miles south of Florida, and southeast of Florida lie the nearby Bahamas. Prominent projections on the Atlantic coast are Capes Cod and Hatteras and the peninsula of Florida; in the Gulf the Mississippi delta and Cape San Blas; and on the Pacific Cape Mendocino. ”

“ In the commencement of the present century, when we paid for our teas and silks with sealskins, cocoanut oil, and sandalwood, not to mention turtle and abalone shells, the United States were bounded by the British provinces on the north, by the Spanish possessions, called Florida, on the south, and by the French possessions, called Louisiana, on the west. Our seacoast extended only from the northern boundary of Maine to the southern boundary of Georgia; and the Mississippi River represented our western water-front, although the settlements in that part of our territory were chiefly French. ”

“ Atlantic and Pacific states, those on the Atlantic and Pacific slopes respectively; gulf states, those bordering on the gulf of Mexico; southwestern states, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas; northwestern states, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska; central states, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee. ”

“ Atlantic America, on account of the priority of its settlement, its vicinity to the ocean, and its favorable position for commerce, has many advantages. The western country, however, has a decided superiority in the fertility of its soil, the benignity of its climate, and the extent of its territory. ”

“ The extensive inland navigation with which this country abounds and the easy communications which many of the rivers afford with the amazing territory to the west of us, will certainly be productive of infinite advantage to the Atlantic States.... For my part, I wish sincerely that every door to that country may be set wide open, that the commercial intercourse may be rendered as free and as easy as possible. This, in my judgment, is the best, if not the only [Pg 201] cement that can bind those people to us for any length of time ”

“ Still finding no outlet, the impatient current, like a wild-beast pacing round its cage, courses the Gulf of Mexico, doubles the peninsula of Florida, and pursues its way first to the north-east, and then to the east, crossing the Atlantic in a retrograde direction, until it laves with its warm billows the coasts of Europe. ”

“ We have all, in our days of atlases and "the use of the globes," been made aware of the fact, that off the southern shore of Massachusetts lies a long and narrow island, called Martha's Vineyard, one of the many defences thrown out by the beleaguered New England coast against its untiring foe, the Atlantic. ”

“ Our wide extended coasts on Atlantic, Pacific, and the Mexican Gulf, are bordered by rich States crowded with a people who produce and consume more per capita than any other race. From the oceans great navigable rivers, deep bays, and placid sounds, extend into the very heart of the country. The Great Lakes are bordered by States Page 82more populous and cities more busy and enterprising than those, which in the proudest days of Rome, and Carthage and Venice skirted the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. ”

“ As has been said many companies were formed, many land charters granted for Northern Virginia, or New England, as it was now called. At length a company of Puritans under the name of the Massachusetts Bay Company got a charter from Charles I, granting them a large tract of land from three miles south of the Charles River to three miles north of the Merrimac, and as far west as the Pacific. Of course no one in those days realised what a huge tract that would be. For no man yet guessed how great a continent America was, or by what thousands of miles the Pacific was separated from the Atlantic. ”

“ Before we quit the subject of the western waters, we will take a view of their principal connections with the Atlantic. These are three; the Hudson river, the Potomac, and the Mississippi itself. Down the last will pass all heavy commodities. But the navigation through the Gulf of Mexico is so dangerous, and that up the Mississippi so difficult and tedious, that it is thought probable that European merchandise will not return through that channel. ”

“ To the United States, whose rich territory on the Pacific is for the ordinary purposes of commerce practically cut off from communication by water with the Atlantic ports, the political and commercial advantages of such a project can scarcely be overestimated. ”

“ What is true of the East Indies is true of the West Indies, England has as much power as we have to control the waters of the Western Atlantic and of the Gulf of Mexico. If we have Boston and New York and Pensacola and New Orleans and Key West, she has Halifax and the Bermudas and Balize and Jamaica and Nassau and a score more of island-harbors stretching in an unbroken line from the Florida Reefs to the mouth of the Orinoco. ”

“ A glance at a map of North America must impress one with the belief that the Pacific coast with its great extent of harbourless water-front is far less favourable to the growth or ideas, institutions, and industries than the deeply indented Atlantic shore-line. From the Isthmus of Panama to the State of Washington there is, as we have seen, but one harbour of the first class, the estuary of the Sacramento, and one of the second or third class, the estuary of the Columbia. From Puget Sound northward harbours are numberless. ”

“ North America, in its extreme irregular coast-line and its great peninsulas, is the counterpart of the Eurasiatic continent in the Old World, while South America, with its almost unbroken coast, is the counterpart of Africa. In North America we have the peninsulas of Alaska, Labrador, Nova Scotia, Florida, Yucatan, and Lower California. South America presents but one great peninsula, that of Patagonia. The Atlantic coast of America is far more irregular and broken than that of the Pacific. ”

“ Now, since the Gulf of Mexico has been constantly growing smaller, and the Mediterranean is being invaded by the land, I reason that similar causes will produce like effects here, and give to each continent an area far greater than our entire globe. The stormy ocean we behold in the west, which corresponds to our Atlantic, though it is far more of a mare clausum in the geographical sense, is also destined to become a calm and placid inland sea. There are, of course, modifications of and checks to the laws tending to increase the land area. ”

“ Now, of course, the greater portion—or I might almost say the whole—of the goods exported reach New Orleans by the Mississippi, and therefore justify the assertion that the safe navigation of that river is, in the fullest sense of the term, a national and not a local interest, bearing as it does on its bosom an essential portion of the industrial produce of eleven different States of the Union. ”

“ The harshness of the Northern winter climate has turned a stream of travel and occupation to the Gulf States, and particularly to Florida, which is indeed now scarcely a Southern State except in climate. The Atlanta and New Orleans Exhibitions did much to bring people of all sections together socially. With returning financial prosperity all the Northern summer resorts have seen increasing numbers of Southern people seeking health and pleasure. I believe that during the past summer more Southerners have been travelling and visiting in the North than ever before. ”

“ Thus, where Central America gave gold and silver, there adventurers from Europe hurried in and stayed. The fisheries of Newfoundland saw men come and go; the sea was there the attraction, not the land. The agricultural resources of Virginia and New England were left undeveloped by Europeans, until the time came when business-like companies were formed by men who could afford to wait, and when enthusiasts went over the Atlantic not so much to make money as to live patiently and in the fear of God. ”

“ Mexican gulf must have been very shallow, as we find that the passage of the waters of the South Atlantic, impelled by the trade-winds through the strait formed by Cuba and Yucatan, is, although it has considerable breadth, so very forcible, as to send a vast stream or current, with great impetuosity round the gulf and through the straits of Florida, as far as the banks of Newfoundland, and to the northern shores of Europe. ”

“ And behold one fine day, one grand day, the most fortunate and daring of the navigators who were exploring the Atlantic in every direction discovered America. In mid-Atlantic there lay two connected continents, stretching from one hemisphere to the other, covering many latitudes and a great variety of clime, and much of this vast territory was still but sparsely inhabited. It was then that our forefathers realised how vast and rich was the earth, and how small and poor in comparison seemed that Mediterranean world in which for so many centuries they had lived. ”

“ The two Atlantic States of New England are old established, rich, and commercial. The two western States I have named are full of new immigrants, are comparatively poor, and are agricultural. Nevertheless any direct taxation levied on those in the East and on those in the West must be equal in its weight. ”

“ The Floridas and New Orleans command the only outlets to the sea, and our best interests require that we should get possession of them. This requisition, however, arises not from a disposition to increase our territory; for neither the Floridas nor New Orleans offer any other inducements than their mere geographical relation to the United States. ”

“ By the treaty of Paris, France had ceded to Great Britain Canada, and that part of Louisiana east of a line beginning at the source of the Mississippi river and running through its centre to the Iberville river, thence through the middle of this river, lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf. That acquisition, with Florida, extended the British North American empire from the Gulf of Mexico to the Arctic Sea, bringing alike the Seminoles and Esquimaux under its dominion. ”

“ The blue breadth over the inland sea of Virginia and Maryland and the sea off Massachusetts and Maine and over Manhattan bay and over Champlain and Erie and over Ontario and Huron and Michigan and Superior, and over the Texan and Mexican and Floridian and Cuban seas, and over the seas off California and Oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. When the long Atlantic coast stretches longer and the Pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south. ”