other questions of real moment and importance, and there were many which at the time seemed such to those engaged in answering them; but the greatest feat of our forefathers of those generations was the deed of the men, who with pack train or wagon train, on horseback, on foot, or by boat upon the waters pushed the frontier ever westward across the continent.

Never before had the world seen the kind of national expansion which gave our people all that part of the American continent lying west of the thirteen original States—­the greatest landmark in which was the Louisiana Purchase.  Our triumph in this process of expansion was indissolubly bound up with the success of our peculiar kind of Federal Government, and this success has been so complete that because of its very completeness we now sometimes fail to appreciate not only the all importance but the tremendous difficulty of the problem with which our nation was originally faced.

When our forefathers joined to call into being this nation, they undertook a task for which there was but little encouraging precedent.  The development of civilization from the earliest period seemed to show the truth of two propositions:  In the first place, it had always proved exceedingly difficult to secure both freedom and strength in any Government; and in the second place, it had always proved well-nigh impossible for a nation to expand without either breaking up or becoming a centralized tyranny.  With the success of our effort to combine a strong and efficient national union, able to put down disorder at home and to maintain our honor and interest abroad, I have not now to deal.  This success was signal and all important, but it was by no means unprecedented in the same sense that our type of expansion was unprecedented.

The history of Rome and of Greece illustrates very well the two types of expansion which had taken place in ancient times, and which had been universally accepted as the only possible types up to the period when, as a nation, we ourselves began to take possession of this continent.  The Grecian states performed remarkable feats of colonization, but each colony as soon as created became entirely independent of the mother state, and in after years was almost as apt to prove its enemy as its friend.  Local self-government, local independence was secured, but only by the absolute sacrifice of anything resembling national unity.

In consequence, the Greek world, for all its wonderful brilliancy and extraordinary artistic, literary, and philosophical development, which has made all mankind its debtor for the ages, was yet wholly unable to withstand a formidable foreign foe, save spasmodically.  As soon as powerful permanent empires arose on its outskirts, the Greek states in the neighborhood of such empires fell under their sway.  National power and greatness were completely sacrificed to local liberty.