New country

“ It reveals, indeed, another fact which, in a new country, is not without a peculiar significance. It is this, that national life is commencing in earnest, and that national characteristics are developing themselves. ”

“ The power and promise of our country's principles moved men and women throughout the American colonies to declare their allegiance to a new country and a new form of government that respected the rights of the individual. ”

“ Here our different races have, through God's providence, become the inheritors of a new country, where the blood of all is mingling, and where a nation is arising which we firmly believe will show through future centuries the nerve, the energy, and intellectual powers which characterised the people of northern Europe. ”

“ Of course any one will allow that the new countries are more immediately adapted to our country population, and that the latter are more generally suited to the foreign lands than those who live in our towns. ”

“ A new country, bounded by the oceans, situated just right in latitude, with the richest land and vastest natural resources of any country in the world, settled by immigrants who had thrown off all the leading strings of the Old World and were in the humor for democracy. ”

“ While these republics were colonies, they contained an old people, living under old institutions, in a new country. Now they are a mixed people, infant as a nation, with a constant accession of minds from old countries, living in a new country, under institutions newly combined out of old elements. ”

“ On the contrary, our national birth was the beginning of a new history, the formation and progress of an untried political system, which separates us from the past and connects us with the future only; and so far as regards the entire development of the natural rights of man, in moral, political, and national life, we may confidently assume that our country is destined to be the great nation of futurity. ”

“ Because after more than a decade of war, it is time to focus on nation building here at home.
As a new greatest generation returns from overseas, we must ask ourselves, what kind of country will they come back to? ”

“ But in such communities, and especially when only a small proportion of the land has been occupied by settlers, there is a still more momentous subject of public concern. I allude to an operation of Government, which has a paramount influence over the happiness of individuals, and the progress of society towards wealth and greatness. I am speaking of the disposal, by the Government, of the lands of the new country. In old countries no such matter ever occupies pubUc attention ”

“ The foundations of the section were laid firmly in a period when the foreign elements were particularly free and eager to contribute to a new society and to receive an impress from the country which offered them a liberty denied abroad. ”

“ We hear a great deal about the new countries being filled up and there being no chance for a man any longer, but some thousands of men who have footed it half-way across the continent can tell us differently, and show substantial proofs that they are right. ”

“ We believe in that country we have the means of building up a great and powerful nationality; and although all new countries are perhaps a little inclined to boast and somewhat inclined to feel a little too proud of their position, we believe we have a territory to occupy which will justify some brilliant hopes. ”

“ Everywhere along the edge of the world, traders and settlers were being tossed on those stormy political waters, where met the new tides of imperial ambition, fast flowing to the farthest confines of the new-found seas. ”

“ The right of the people of North America to be considered as one people, and as a peculiar people among the nations of the earth, is founded upon the character of its first emigrant-colonies, they who were peculiarly the creators of the society of the New World, and who infused their spirit into it. ”

“ Out of the chaos of that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable—a new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. ”

“ A new nation stepped, with a touch of swagger, upon the stage,—a nation which had broken alike with the traditions and with the wisely wrought experience of the Old World, and which, with all the haste and rashness of youth, was minded to work out a separate policy and destiny of its own. ”

“ If the country were open on its borders, new forms would certainly immigrate, and this would likewise seriously disturb the relations of some of the former inhabitants. ”

“ To this ancient land, with its glorious past and splendid present, to this land of many memories and of eager hopes, I come from a young nation, which is by blood akin to, and yet different from, each of the great nations of Middle and Western Europe; which has inherited or acquired much from each, but is changing and developing every inheritance and acquisition into something new and strange. ”

“ The result of the organisation of the American colonies into a state, and of the bringing together of the diverse communities contained in these colonies, was the creation not merely of a new nation, but of a new temperament. ”

“ If we turn to the Northern border, where we are about to celebrate a century of peace with England, we see in progress, like a belated procession of our own history the spread of pioneers, the opening of new wildernesses, the building of new cities, the growth of a new and mighty nation. ”

“ I go within the walls of the capitol at Washington, and there, under the star-spangled banners that wave amid its domes, I find the representatives of three territories, and of twenty-four nations, nations in many senses they may be called, that have within them all the germ and sinew to raise a greater people than many of the proud principalities of Europe, all speaking one language—all acting with one heart, and all burning with the same enthusiasm—the love and glory of our common country,—even if parties do exist, and bitter domestic quarrels now and then arise. ”

“ Into this vast shaggy continent of ours poured the first feeble tide of European settlement. European men, institutions, and ideas were lodged in the American wilderness, and this great American West took them to her bosom, taught them a new way of looking upon the destiny of the common man, trained them in adaptation to the conditions of the New World, to the creation of new institutions to meet new needs ”

“ We stand at the opening of the one hundred and fiftieth year since our national consciousness first asserted itself by unmistakable action with an array of force. The old sentiment of detached and dependent colonies disappeared in the new sentiment of a united and independent Nation. ”

“ Dollarson:
Why continue with this litany of names? They merely indicate the economic, political, social and intellectual importance which the whole world attaches to the New Continent, and what great hopes are associated with its future. That is why it is called the Land of Hopes. ”

“ Does it not seem to you amazing that the Americans and British who go forth to seek new colonies, should lure our simple people to foreign countries, where the mode of living, the atmosphere, is altogether different from this, when here at their doors is a new land undiscovered and unexploited? ”

“ Not only, moreover, did the American man inaugurate on the soil of the New World an original and relatively advanced civilization, but he has left, chiefly in the north, indisputable traces of his presence in the most remote ages. ”

“ All these subjects of interest abroad found a reflex in the New World, where the grandeur of the old primeval woods, the silence and solitude surrounding the scattered colonists, augmented the natural gloom of asperity and religious fervor. ”

“ This change may arise either from a new development or transformation of the old elements, or else from a new grouping of these elements with other and varied elements; so that the words "new" nation or "young" nation may have a real difference of significance in one case from what they have in another. ”

“ But we were more interested to visit old countries and old nations than to set foot on a virgin continent, and to see colonies and cities, which, with all their growth, could only be a smaller edition of what we have so abundantly in the new States of America. ”

“ New countries, in planning their system of government, have advantages over old lands steeped in tradition and hampered by precedent. They can profit by the mistakes of the older countries, and can, more or less, start with a clean slate. ”

“ And when the peculiar condition of society and the general necessities of the world require a new or an additional continent, then that which was created from the beginning and kept in reserve for this very emergency, is in due time disclosed to the rest of the world. ”

“ Those nations which have so lately emigrated from the midst of our settlements to live upon our western borders, and have made some progress in agriculture and the arts of civilization, have, in the property they have acquired, and the protection and aid extended to them, too many advantages to be induced readily to take up arms against us, particularly if they can be brought to the full conviction that their new homes will be permanent and undisturbed ”

“ While announcing to the nations of the world the new position which the people of this Republic have felt themselves called upon to assume, courtesy to their opinions seems to demand a brief accompanying statement of the causes which induced them, first to expatriate themselves from the land of their nativity, and to form settlements on this barbarous coast, and now to organize their government by the assumption of a sovereign and independent character. ”

“ Call only for requisitions for the foreign interest, and aid them by loans. Keep on so till the American character be marked with some certain features. We are yet too young to know what we are fit for. The continual migration of people from Europe, and the settlement of new countries on our western frontiers, are strong arguments against making new experiments now in government. ”

“ As a nation develops in civilisation, or foreign policy, or in specialised ambitions, or in consciousness of nationality, or in peculiar constitutional identity, it has to develop new branches or systems of law, or to borrow them ready-made from nations whose polity is in advance of its own, who have made themselves representative nations in the particular branch of sociology in which it desires to regulate itself. ”

“ All great movements for securing the extension of freedom to any class of people have their origin in new countries. If at any time prior to the settlement of our Atlantic border any man had dared to proclaim the fundamental truths upon which this nation is founded, he would have paid the price of his temerity with his head. ”

“ We are grown more nearly citizens of the world.
This new knowledge, these new duties and interests, must have two effects—they must extend our power, influence, and trade, and they must elevate the public service. Every returning soldier or traveler tells the same story—that the very name "American" has taken a new significance throughout the Orient. The shrewd Oriental no longer regards us as a second- or third-class Power. ”

“ Yes, it is indeed too true that we must look for new and: energetic governments in recently settled countries. The British colonies of North America passed through a Revolution, and reared for themselves the proudest republic on the face of the earth. ”

“ Only the American—and in this category [Pg 297] I include the migratory alien who has lived with us and caught the pioneer spirit and a sense of new social vistas—has the chance to become that citizen of the world. America is coming to be, not a nationality but a trans-nationality, a weaving back and forth, with the other lands, of many threads of all sizes and colors. Any movement which attempts to thwart this weaving, or to dye the fabric any one color, or disentangle the threads of the strands, is false to this cosmopolitan vision. ”

“ Under such laws and beneficent institutions, this territory would soon be settled by men from the West, the North, and from Europe, intelligent, enterprising, and industrious, who would retrieve its worn-out fields, and introduce new systems of culture, with all the modern labor-saving utensils. ”

“ The ease with which personal contact can be established between distantly located countries and peoples is a new and powerful link in the chain that draws and holds the nations together. [Pg 351] Emigrations and colonizations are additional and powerful levers. One people learns from the other. Each seeks to excel. ”

“ But my country, the Middle State, the Flowery Land, stands proudly alone, having survived, in one unbroken line, ever increasing in size and brilliancy, down to the present day. And in the future it will spread into a myriad branches, to be fused together in one furnace. Ah, beautiful is my country! ”

“ Slowly the new order is coming, the day of the Commonwealth of nationalities, where men from many lands, drawing their spiritual reserves from the home that nourished their line through the long generations, will yet render loyal citizenship to the new State which harbors them and gives them a good life. ”

“ We should remember that our location is everything to us as a national power, of intelligence and wealth, and that this location is in the wake of national prosperity and greatness. It may have escaped your notice that around this globe is a narrow zone, between the thirtieth and sixtieth parallels of north latitude, and within that narrow zone is our home. Within that belt of power have existed all the great nations of the past, and in it exist all the great nations of the present. What is there in this charmed circle, in this favored zone, that brings national power? ”