William Seward: “Roads and canals are among the most essential means of improving the condition of nations.”

The first object of human association is the improvement of the condition of the associated.

There are events, the monuments of which, surviving every other memorial of human existence, eternize the nation to whose history they belong, after all other vestiges of its glory have disappeared from the globe.

The American colonists had been trained to rational conceptions of freedom, by lessons of wisdom and sagacity read them by their Puritan fathers, and by the experience in self-government, afforded during a century and a half of enjoyment…

The measurable failure of this struggle in France, teaches the necessity of due preparation before a people can advance to the permanent possession and enjoyment of their rights.