That expectation has been thus far signally verified.  The United States entered at once into the occupation of their rightful possessions westward to the banks of the Mississippi.  Next, by the spontaneous proffer of France, they acquired Louisiana and its territorial extension, or right of extension, north to the line of the treaty demarcation between France and Great Britain, and west to the Pacific Ocean.  Next, by amicable arrangement with Spain, they acquired the Floridas, and complete southern maritime frontiers upon the Gulf of Mexico.  Then came the union with the independent State of Texas, followed by the acquisitions of California and New Mexico, and then of Arizona.  Finally, Russia has ceded to us Alaska, and the continent of North America has become independent of Europe, except so much of it as continues to maintain political relations with Great Britain.

Meanwhile, partly by natural increase and partly by voluntary immigration from Europe, our population has risen from 3,000,000 to nearly 40,000,000; the number of States and Territories united under the Constitution has been augmented from thirteen to forty-seven; the development of internal wealth and power has kept pace with political expansion; we have occupied in part and peopled the vast interior of the continent; we have bound the Pacific to the Atlantic by a chain of intervening States and organized Territories; we have delivered the Republic from the anomaly and the ignominy of domestic servitude; we have constitutionally fixed the equality of all races and of all men before the law; and we have established, at the cost of a great civil war—­a cost, however, not beyond the value of such a result—­the indissoluble national unity of the United States.

In all these marked stages of national progress, from the Declaration of Independence to the recent amendments of the Constitution, it is impossible not to perceive a providential series and succession of events, intimately attached one to the other, and possessed of definite character as a whole, whatever incidental departures from such uniformity may have marked, or seemed to mark, our foreign policy under the influence of temporary causes or of the conflicting opinions of statesmen.

In the time of Washington, of the first Adams, of Jefferson, and of Madison the condition of Europe, engaged in the gigantic wars of the French Revolution and of the Empire, produced its series of public questions and gave tone and color to our foreign policy.  In the time of Monroe, of the second Adams, and of Jackson, and subsequently thereto, the independence of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies of America produced its series of questions and its apparent modification of our public policy.  Domestic questions of territorial organization, of social emancipation, and of national unity have also largely occupied the minds and the attention of the later Administrations.

The treaties of alliance and guaranty with France, which contributed so much to our independence, were one source of solicitude to the early Administrations, which were endeavoring to protect our commerce from the depredations and wrongs to which the maritime policy of England and the reaction of that policy on France subjected it.  For twenty years we struggled in vain to accomplish this, and at last drifted into war.