The Walt Whitman Archive
Complete Prose Works
"From a territorial area of
less than nine hundred thousand square miles, the Union has expanded into over
four millions and a half—fifteen times larger than that of Great
Britain and France combined—with a shore-line, including Alaska, equal
to the entire circumference of the earth, and with a domain within these lines
far wider than that of the Romans in their proudest days of conquest and renown.
With a river, lake, and coastwise commerce estimated at over two thousand
millions of dollars per year; with a railway traffic of four to six thousand
millions per year, and the annual domestic exchanges of the country running up
to nearly ten thousand millions per year; with over two thousand millions of
dollars invested in manufacturing, mechanical, and mining industry; with over
five hundred millions of acres of land in actual occupancy, valued, with their
appurtenances, at over seven thousand millions of dollars, and producing
annually crops valued at over three thousand millions of dollars; with a realm
which, if the density of Belgium's population were possible, would be vast
enough to include all the present inhabitants of the world; and with equal
rights guaranteed to even the poorest and humblest of our forty millions of
people—we can, with a manly pride akin to that which
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distinguish'd the palmiest days of Rome, claim," &c., &c.,
&c.—Vice-President Colfax's Speech, July
4, 1870.
LATER—London "Times," (Weekly,) June 23, '82.
"The wonderful wealth-producing power of the United States defies and sets at naught the grave drawbacks of a mischievous protective tariff, and has already obliterated, almost wholly, the traces of the greatest of modern civil wars. What is especially remarkable in the present development of American energy and success is its wide and equable distribution. North and south, east and west, on the shores of the Atlantic and the Pacific, along the chain of the great lakes, in the valley of the Mississippi, and on the coasts of the gulf of Mexico, the creation of wealth and the increase of population are signally exhibited. It is quite true, as has been shown by the recent apportionment of population in the House of Representatives, that some sections of the Union have advanced, relatively to the rest, in an extraordinary and unexpected degree. But this does not imply that the States which have gain'd no additional representatives or have actually lost some have been stationary or have receded. The fact is that the present tide of prosperity has risen so high that it has overflow'd all barriers, and has fill'd up the back-waters, and establish'd something like an approach to uniform success."