Part One, The Threshold Summary and Analysis

On Independence Day, 1868, William Gilpin made a speech in Denver. He speaks of Manifest Destiny and of the glorious opportunities that awaited Americans in the form of the land beyond the Colorado Territory, making a number of unrealistic claims about the viability of settling these vast areas. Gilpin, the territorial governor of Colorado, makes these remarks with the passion for expansion that was common for men of Gilpin's experience and vision in that time.

At the time of this speech, America's explorations of the Western territory that stretched to the Pacific Ocean had revealed vast expanses of forests for timber, meadows for agriculture, mountains for climbing, and land to be settled and cleared. Gilpin's remarks are compared to Major John Wesley Powell, who on this same day in 1868, began an exploration of the Wyoming Territory...