Our country was planned by Providence for a united and homogeneous people. Apparent differences harmonize. Even climate, passing through all gradations from North to South, is so tempered as to present an easy uniformity from the Atlantic to the Rocky Mountains. Unmeasured supplies of all kinds, mineral and agricultural, are at hand,--the richest ores and the most golden crops, with the largest coal-fields of the world below and the largest corn-fields of the world above. Strabo said of ancient Gaul, that, by its structure, with its vast plains and considerable rivers, it was destined to become the theatre of a great civilization.[74] But the structure of our country is more auspicious. Our plains are vaster and our rivers more considerable, furnishing a theatre grander than any imagined by the Greek geographer. It is this theatre, thus appointed by Nature, which is now open for the good of mankind. Here I stop, to review the field over which we have passed, and to gather its harvest into one sheaf. Beginning with the infancy of the Colonies, we have seen how, with different names and governments, they were all under _one sovereignty_, with common and interchangeable rights of citizenship, so that no British subject in one Colony could be made an alien in any other Colony; how, even at the beginning, longings for a common life began, showing themselves in “loving accord”; how Franklin regarded the Colonies “as so many counties”; how the longings increased, until, under the pressure of the mother country, they broke forth in aspiration for “an American Commonwealth”; how they were at last organized in a Congress, called, from its comprehensive character, “Continental”; how, in the exercise of powers derived from “the good people,” and in their name, the Continental Congress put forth the Declaration of Independence, by which the sovereignty of the mother country was forever renounced, and we were made “one people,” solemnly dedicated to Human Rights, and thus became a Nation; how the undivided sovereignty of all was substituted for the undivided sovereignty of the mother country, embracing all the States as the other sovereignty had embraced all the Colonies; how, according to Franklin, the States were locked together, “so as never to be separated, but by breaking them to pieces”; how in an evil hour the Confederation was formed in deference to denationalizing pretensions of the States; how the longings for national life continued, and found utterance in Congress, in Washington, and in patriot compeers; how Jay wished the States should be like “counties”; how “Washington denounced State sovereignty as “bantling” and “monster”; how at last a National Convention assembled, with Washington as President, where it was voted that “a National Government ought to be established”; how in this spirit, after ample debate, the National Constitution was formed, with its preamble beginning “We, the people,” with its guaranty