The Works of William H Seward

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SPEECHES THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. FEEEDOM IN THE NEW TEEEITOEIES. MARCH 11, 1860. Four years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor, capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SPEECHES THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES. FEEEDOM IN THE NEW TEEEITOEIES. MARCH 11, 1860. Four years ago, California, a Mexican province, scarcely inhabited and quite unexplored, was unknown even to our usually immoderate desires, except by a harbor, capacious and tranquil, which only statesmen then foresaw would be useful in the oriental commerce of a far distant, if not merely chimerical, future. A year ago, California was a mere military dependency of our own, and we were celebrating with unanimity and enthusiasm its acquisition, with its newly-discovered but yet untold and untouched mineral wealth, as the most auspicious of many and unparalleled achievements. To-day, California is a state, more populous than the least and richer than several of the greatest of our thirty states. This same California, thua rich and populous, is here asking admission into the Union, and finds us debating the dissolution of the Union itself. No wonder if we are perplexed with ever-changing embarrassments No wonder if we are appalled by ever-increasing responsibilities No wonder if we are bewildered by the ever-augmenting magnitude and rapidity of national vicissitudes I Shall California Be Eeceived ? For myself, upon my individual judgment and conscience, I answer, Yes. For myself, as an instructed representative of one of the states, of that one even of the states which is soonest and longest to be pressed in commercial and political rivalry by the new commonweath, I answer, Yes. Let California come in. Every new state, whether she come from the east or from the west, every new state, coming from whatever part of the continent she may, is always welcome. But California, that comes from the clime where the west dies away into the rising east; California, that bound...