The American Republic, taking advantage of its fortunate federal features and of its strong central government, boldly struck out on a new path, which secured the freedom-giving properties of the Greek method, while preserving national…

New States were created, which stood on exactly the same footing as the old; and yet these new States formed integral and inseparable parts of a great and rapidly growing nation.

This movement was original with the American Republic; she was dealing with new conditions, and on this point the history of England merely taught her what to avoid.

The new American States, themselves colonies in the old Greek sense, were subject only to a government which they helped administer on equal terms with the old States.

The absolute novelty of this feature, as the world then stood, fails to impress us now because we are so used to it.

Nowadays, and rightfully, we regard as peculiarly American the complete severance of Church and State, and refuse to allow the State to contribute in any way towards the support of any sect.

With such a foundation the State was little likely to plunge into the perilous abysses of anarchic license or of separatism and disunion.

Yet it must not be forgotten that the daring needed for the performance of this particular deed can in no way be compared with that shown by the real pioneers, the early explorers and Indian fighters.

The dangers they ran and the hardships they suffered in no wise approached those undergone and overcome by the iron-willed, iron-limbed hunters who first built their lonely cabins on the Cumberland and Kentucky.

The settler of 1788 journeyed at ease over paths worn smooth by the feet of many thousands of predecessors; but the early pioneers cut their own trails in the untrodden wilderness, and warred single-handed against wild nature and wild man.

They showed that they possessed the highest attributes of good citizenship--resolution and sagacity, stern morality, and the capacity to govern others as well as themselves.

But they performed no pioneer feat of any note as such, and they were not called upon to display a tithe of the reckless daring and iron endurance of hardship which characterized the conquerors of the Illinois and the founders of Kentucky…

It was a triumph of collectivism, rather than of individualism.

The fates and the careers of all the mighty states which yet lay formless in the forest were in great measure determined by what was at this time done.

The nation had decreed that they should all have equal rights with the older States and with one another, and yet that they should remain forever inseparable from the Union; and above all, it had been settled that the bondman should be…

Their founding represented the triumph of the principle of collective national action over the spirit of intense individualism displayed so commonly on the frontier.

The uncontrolled initiative of the individual, which was the chief force in the settlement of the Southwest, was given comparatively little play in the settlement of the Northwest.

The Northwest owed its existence to the action of the nation as a whole.

They knew that the Revolution would have failed had it not been for the continental troops.

But their marvellous faculty for taking advantage of cover, and for fighting in concert when under cover, has always made the warlike tribes foes to be dreaded beyond all others when in the woods, or among wild broken mountains.

In the other a still more remarkable defence was made by thirty-one men under Major James Powell against an even larger force, which charged again and again, and did not accept their repulse as final until they had lost three hundred of…

But no such victory was ever gained over mountain or forest Indians who had become accustomed to fighting the white men.

Every officer who has ever faced these foes has had to spend years in learning his work, and has then been forced to see a bitterly inadequate reward for his labors.

But the blow was only severe enough to anger and unite them, not to cripple or crush them.

I have always striven to do justice to the red people; last fall, trusting in Cherokee friendship, I with utmost difficulty prevented a great army from marching against them.