were not
unreasonable in their expectation of seeing the splendid spectacle. The
rate of increase in population that we had known warranted their most
sanguine hopes. Such a nation,--a nation that should grow its own food,
make its own cloths, dig or pick up its own gold and silver and
quicksilver, mine its own coal and iron, supply itself, and the rest of
the world too, with cotton and tobacco and rice and sugar, and that
should have a mercantile tonnage of not less than fifteen millions, and
perhaps very much more,--such a nation, we say, it was reasonable to
expect the United States would become by the year 1900. But because the
thought of it was pleasing to us, we are not to conclude that it would
be so to European sovereigns and statesmen. On the contrary, they had
abundant reason to dread the accumulation of so much strength in one
empire. Even in 1860 we had passed the point at which it was possible
for us to have any fear of European nations, or of a European alliance.
We had but to will it, and British America, and what there was left of
Spanish America and Mexico, would all have been gathered in, reaped by
that mowing-machine, the American sword. Had our rulers of that year
sought to stave off civil war by plunging us into a foreign war, we
could have made ourselves masters of all North America, despite the
opposition of all Europe, had all Europe been ready to try the question
with us, whether the Monroe doctrine were a living thing or a dirty
skeleton from the past. But all Europe would not have opposed us, seeing
that England would have been the principal sufferer from our success;
and England is unpopular throughout Continental Europe,--in France, in
Germany, and in Russia. Probably the French Emperor would have preferred
a true cordial understanding with us to a nominal one with England, and,
confining his labors to Europe and the East, would have obtained her
"natural boundaries" for France, and supremacy over Egypt. The war might
have left but three great powers in the world, namely, France, Russia,
and America, or the United States, the latter to include Canada and
Mexico, with the Slave-Power's ascendency everywhere established in
North America. It was on the cards that we might avoid dissension and
civil strife by extending the Union, and by invading and conquering the
territories of our neighbors. Why this course was not adopted it is not
our purpose now to discuss; but that it would have been adopted