Final Report of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition Commission Part 6

St. Louis, with an ever-widening sense of the responsibility, and an ever-growing appreciation of the opportunity, has, up to this moment, risen to the full measure of the duty a.s.sumed. The management of the exposition has never despaired, but with a realizing sense of the mighty task it has undertaken, and mindful of the limitations of human capabilities, with singleness of purpose and with personal sacrifice for which it neither asks nor deserves credit, has striven to meet the expectations of those whose trust it holds.

The Exposition Company makes its acknowledgments to those faithful and efficient officials whose intelligent service have contributed so much toward bringing the enterprise to its present stage. The company expresses its obligation to the artists and artisans who have reared these graceful and majestic structures and whose labors have been inspired more by pride in the end to be achieved than by hope of material reward.

The Universal Exposition of 1904, when the date of opening rolls around one year from to-day, will, with its buildings completed, its exhibits installed, be thoroughly prepared to receive the millions of visitors who will enter its gates. The distinguished a.s.semblage which honors us with its presence to-day can come nearer forming an adequate conception of the scope of the work by personal inspection than through the writings or ill.u.s.trations of authors and designers, however great their talent may be.

To the President of the United States, to the accomplished representatives of foreign countries, to the chief executives of the sovereign States, to the Senators and Representatives of the National Congress, to the great concourse of visitors here congregated, we extend greeting. If you are pleased with what has been accomplished, your approval is abundant reward for the labor we have performed.

We bear in mind and trust you do not overlook that this celebration is of no section, but of the entire country. It is our hope and our expectation that every section and every commonwealth, and in fact, every community, will cherish a proprietary interest and lend hopeful aid to this undertaking, to the end that it may prove as nearly as may be commensurate with the country and the century whose achievement and advancement it is designed to commemorate.

The beautiful picture whose outlines you now behold will, to adopt the simile of the chief designer, when completed, compose a song that will reverberate around the globe.

And now, Mr. President, it is my pleasing privilege and high honor to present to you for dedication the buildings of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition. May a high standard of citizens.h.i.+p and broader humanity and the mission of the country whose worthy representative you are be sustained and fostered and promoted by the uses to which these structures are devoted.

May the happiness of mankind be advanced and broadened by the lofty purposes that inspired this undertaking and moved our own and sister countries to unite in its accomplishment.

Fifth. Dedication address by the President of the United States:

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: At the outset of my address let me recall to the minds of my hearers that the soil upon which we stand, before it was ours was successively the possession of two mighty empires--Spain and France--whose sons made a deathless record of heroism in the early annals of the New World.

No history of the Western country can be written without paying heed to the wonderful part played therein in the early days by the soldiers, missionaries, explorers, and traders who did their work for the honor of the proud banners of France and Castile.

While the settlers of English-speaking stock and those of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian origin, who were a.s.sociated with them, were still clinging close to the eastern seaboard, the pioneers of Spain and of France had penetrated deep into the hitherto unknown wildness of the West and had wandered far and wide within the boundaries of what is now our mighty country. The very cities themselves--St. Louis, New Orleans, Santa Fe, N.

Mex.--bear witness by their t.i.tles to the nationalities of their founders. It was not until the Revolution had begun that the English-speaking settlers pushed west across the Alleghanies, and not until a century ago that they entered in to possess the land upon which we now stand.

We have met here to-day to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the event which more than any other, after the foundation of the Government, and always excepting its preservation, determined the character of our national life--determined that we should be a great expanding nation instead of relatively a small and stationary one.

Of course, it was not with the Louisiana Purchase that our career of expansion began. In the middle of the Revolutionary war the Illinois region, including the present States of Illinois and Indiana, was added to our domain by force of arms, as a sequel to the adventurous expedition of George Rogers Clark and his frontier riflemen.

Later the treaties of Jay and Pinckney materially extended our real boundaries to the west. But none of these events was of so striking a character as to fix the popular imagination. The old thirteen colonies had always claimed that their rights stretched westward to the Mississippi, and vague and unreal though these claims were until made good by conquest, settlement, and diplomacy, they still served to give the impression that the earliest westward movements of our people were little more than the filling in of already existing national boundaries.

But there could be no illusion about the acquisition of the vast territory beyond the Mississippi, stretching westward to the Pacific, which in that day was known as Louisiana. This immense region was admittedly the territory of a foreign power, of a European kingdom. None of our people had ever laid claim to a foot of it. Its acquisition could in no sense be treated as rounding out any existing claims. When we acquired it, we made evident once for all that consciously and of set purpose we had embarked on a career of expansion; that we had taken our place among those daring and hardy nations who risk much with the hope and desire of winning high position among the great powers of the earth. As is so often the case in nature the law of development of a living organism showed itself in its actual workings to be wiser than the wisdom of the wisest.

This work of expansion was by far the greatest work of our people during the years that intervened between the adoption of the Const.i.tution and the outbreak of the civil war. There were 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 ill.u.s.trates 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.

With Rome the exact opposite occurred. The imperial city rose to absolute dominion over all the people of Italy, and then expanded her rule over the entire civilized world, by a process which kept the nation strong and united, but gave no room whatever for local liberty and self-government. All other cities and countries were subject to Rome. In consequence, this great and masterful race of warriors, rulers, road builders, and administrators stamped their indelible impress upon all the after life of our race, and yet let an over-centralization eat out the vitals of their empire until it became an empty sh.e.l.l, so that when the barbarians came they destroyed only what had already become worthless to the world.

The underlying viciousness of each type of expansion was plain enough, and the remedy now seems simple enough. But when the fathers of the Republic first formulated the Const.i.tution under which we live, this remedy was untried, and no one could foretell how it would work. They themselves began the experiment almost immediately by adding new States to the original thirteen. Excellent people in the East viewed this initial expansion of the country with great alarm. Exactly as during the colonial period many good people in the mother country thought it highly important that settlers should be kept out of the Ohio Valley in the interest of the fur companies, so after we had become a nation many good people on the Atlantic coast felt grave apprehension lest they might somehow be hurt by the westward growth of the nation.

These good people shook their heads over the formation of States in the fertile Ohio Valley, which now forms part of the heart of our nation, and they declared that the destruction of the Republic had been accomplished when through the Louisiana Purchase we acquired nearly half of what is now that same Republic's present territory. Nor was their feeling unnatural.

Only the adventurous and the fa.r.s.eeing can be expected heartily to welcome the process of expansion, for a nation which expands is a nation which is entering upon a great career, and with greatness there must of necessity come perils which daunt all save the most stout-hearted.

We expand by carving the wilderness into Territories, and out of these Territories building new States when once they had received as permanent settlers a sufficient number of our own people. Being a practical nation, we have never tried to force on any section of our new territory an unsuitable form of government merely because it was suitable for another section under different conditions. Of the territory covered by the Louisiana Purchase, a portion was given statehood within a few years. Another portion has not been admitted to statehood, although a century has elapsed, although doubtless it soon will be. In each case we showed the practical governmental genius of our race by devising methods suitable to meet the actual existing needs, not by insisting upon the application of some abstract s.h.i.+bboleth to all our new possessions alike, no matter how incongruous this application might sometimes be.

Over by far the major part of the territory, however, our people spread in such numbers during the course of the nineteenth century that we were able to build up State after State, each with exactly the same complete local independence in all matters affecting purely its own domestic interests as in any of the original thirteen States, each owing the same absolute fealty to the Union of all the States which each of the original thirteen States also owes, and, finally, each having the same proportional right to its share in shaping and directing the common policy of the Union which is possessed by any other State, whether of the original thirteen or not.

This process now seems to us part of the natural order of things, but it was wholly unknown until our own people devised it. It seems to us a mere matter of course, a matter of elementary right and justice, that in the deliberations of the national representative bodies the representatives of a State which came into the Union but yesterday stand on a footing of exact and entire equality with those of the commonwealth whose sons once signed the Declaration of Independence.

But this way of looking at the matter is purely modern and in its origin purely American. When Was.h.i.+ngton, during his Presidency, saw new States come into the Union on a footing of complete equality with the old, every European nation which had colonies still administered them as dependencies, and every other mother country treated the colonists not as a self-governing equal, but as a subject.

The process which we began has since been followed by all the great people who were capable both of expansion and of self-government, and now the world accepts it as the natural process, as the rule; but a century and a quarter ago it was not merely exceptional--it was unknown.

This, then, is the great historic significance of the movement of continental expansion, in which the Louisiana Purchase was the most striking single achievement. It stands out in marked relief even among the feats of a nation of pioneers, a nation whose people have, from the beginning, been picked out by a process of natural selection from among the most enterprising individuals of the nations of western Europe.

The acquisition of the territory is a credit to the broad and far-sighted statesmans.h.i.+p of the great statesmen to whom it was immediately due, and, above all, to the aggressive and masterful character of the hardy pioneer folk to whose restless energy these statesmen gave expression and direction, whom they followed rather than led. The history of the land comprised within the limits of the Purchase is an epitome of the entire history of our people. Within these limits we have gradually built up State after State, until now they many times over surpa.s.s in wealth, in population, and in many-sided development the original thirteen States as they were when their delegates met in the Continental Congress.

The people of these States have shown themselves mighty in war with their fellow-man and mighty in strength to tame the rugged wilderness. They could not thus have conquered the forest, the prairie, the mountain and the desert, had they not possessed the great fighting virtues, the qualities which enable a people to overcome the forces of hostile men and hostile nature.

On the other hand they could not have used aright their conquest had they not in addition possessed the qualities of self-mastery and self-restraint, the power of acting in combination with their fellows, the power of yielding obedience to the law and of building up an orderly civilization. Courage and hardihood are indispensable virtues in a people, but the people which possess no others can never rise high in the scale either of power or of culture. Great peoples must have in addition the governmental capacity which comes only when individuals fully recognize their duties to one another and to the whole body politic and are able to join together in feats of constructive statesmans.h.i.+p and of honest and effective administration.

The old pioneer days are gone with their roughness and their hards.h.i.+p, their incredible toil and their wild, half-savage romance. But the need for the pioneer virtues remains the same as ever. The peculiar frontier conditions have vanished; but the manliness and stalwart hardihood of the frontiersman can be given even freer scope under the conditions surrounding the complex industrialism of the present day.

In this great region acquired for our people under the presidency of Jefferson, this region stretching from the Gulf to the Canadian border, from the Mississippi to the Rockies, the material and social progress has been so vast that alike for weal and for woe, the people share the opportunities and bear the burdens common to the entire civilized world. The problems before us are fundamentally the same east and west of the Mississippi, in the new States and in the old, and exactly the same qualities are required for their successful solution.

We meet here to-day to commemorate a great event, an event which marks an era in statesmans.h.i.+p no less than in pioneering. It is fitting that we should pay our homage in words; but we must in honor make our words good by deeds. We have every right to take a just pride in the great deeds of our forefathers; but we show ourselves unworthy to be their descendants if we make what they did an excuse for our lying supine instead of an incentive to the effort to show ourselves, by our acts, worthy of them. In the administration of city, State, and nation, in the management of our home life and conduct of our business and social relations, we are bound to show certain high and fine qualities of character under penalty of seeing the whole heart of our civilization eaten out while the body still lives.

We justly pride ourselves on our marvelous material prosperity, and such prosperity must exist in order to establish a foundation upon which a higher life can be built; but unless we do in very fact build this higher life thereon, the material prosperity itself will go but for very little. Now, in 1903, in the altered conditions, we must meet the changed and changing problems with the spirit shown by the men who in 1803 and in subsequent years, gained, explored, conquered, and settled this vast territory, then a desert, now filled with thriving and populous States.

The old days were great because the men who lived in them had mighty qualities; and we must make the new days great by showing the same qualities. We must insist upon courage and resolution, upon hardihood, tenacity, and fertility in resource; we must insist upon the strong virile virtues; and we must insist no less upon the virtues of self-restraint, self-mastery, regard for the rights of others; we must show our abhorrence of cruelty, brutality, and corruption, in public and private life alike.

If we come short in any of these qualities we shall measurably fail; and if, as I believe we surely shall, we develop these qualities in the future to an even greater degree than in the past, then in the century now beginning we shall make of this Republic the freest and most orderly, the most just and most mighty nation which has ever come forth from the womb of time.

Sixth. Grand chorus: "Unfold Ye Portals."

Seventh. Address by Hon. Grover Cleveland:

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The impressiveness of this occasion is greatly enhanced by reason of an atmosphere of prophecy's fulfillment which surrounds it. The thought is in our minds that we are amid awe-inspiring surroundings, where we may see and feel things foretold a century ago. We are here in recognition of the one hundredth anniversary of an event which doubled the area of the young American nation, and dedicated a new and wide domain of American progress and achievement. The treaty whose completion we to-day commemorate was itself a prophecy of our youthful nation's mighty growth and development.

At its birth prophets in waiting joyously foretold the happiness which its future promised. He who was the chief actor in the United States in its negotiations, as he signed the perfected instrument, thus declared its effect and far-reaching consequences: "The instrument which we have just signed will cause no tears to be shed. It prepares ages of happiness for innumerable generations of human creatures. The Mississippi and the Missouri will see them succeed one another, truly worthy of the regard and care of Providence in the bosom of equality under just laws, freed from the errors of superst.i.tion and the scourges of bad government."

He who represented the nation with whom we negotiated, when he afterwards gave to the world his account of the transactions, declared: "The consequences of the cession of Louisiana will extend to the most distant posterity. It interests vast regions that will become by their civilization and power the rivals of Europe before another century commences," and warmed to enthusiasm by the developments already in view and greater ones promised, he added: "Who can contemplate without vivid emotion this spectacle of the happiness of the present generation and the certain pledges of the prosperity of numberless generations that will follow? At these magnificent prospects the heart beats with joy in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those who were permitted to see the dawn of these bright days, and who are a.s.sured that so many happy presages will be accomplished."

There was another prophet, greater than all--prophet and priest--who, higher up the mountain than others, heard more distinctly the voice of destiny, whose heart and soul were full of prophecy and whose every faculty was tense and strong as he wrought for our nation's advancement and for the peace and contentment of his fellow-countryman. From the fullness of grat.i.tude and joy, he thus wrote to one who had a.s.sisted in the consummation of this great treaty:

"For myself and my country, I thank you for the aid you have given in it; and I congratulate you on having lived to give these aids in a transaction replete with blessings to unborn millions of men, and which will mark the face of a portion of the globe so extensive as that which now composes the United States of America;" and when, as President, he gave notice in a message to Congress of the actual occupancy by the Government of its new acquisition, he happily presaged the future and gave a.s.surance of his complete faith and confidence in the beneficent result of our nation's extensions, in these words: "On this important acquisition, so favorable to the immediate interests of our western citizens, so auspicious to the peace and security of the nation in general, which adds to our country territories so extensive and fertile and to our citizens new brethren to partake of the blessings of freedom and self-government, I offer Congress and our country my sincere congratulations."

Our prophets do not live forever. They are not here to see how stupendously the growth and development of the American nation, or the domain newly acquired in their day, have, during a short century, outrun their antic.i.p.ations and predictions.

Almost within the limits of the territory gained by the Louisiana purchase, we have already carved out twelve great States, leaving still a large residue whose occupants are even now loudly clamoring for statehood.

Instead of the 50,000 white settlers who occupied this domain in 1803, it now contains 15,000,000 of industrious, enterprising, intelligent Americans, const.i.tuting about one-fifth of the population of all our States; and these are defiantly contesting for premiers.h.i.+p in wealth and material success with the oldest of our States, and are their equals in every phase of advanced intelligence and refined civilization.