The original settlers, in large part, came to America to find the freedom and political opportunity they so richly deserved. If they did not, at once, always grant freedom to others in their own settlements, there was plenty of room for the others elsewhere. The Baptists, driven out of Massachusetts, found refuge in Rhode Island. The Quakers, whipped out of New England, discovered room and to spare in Pennsylvania. The Cavaliers, forced into exile during the Puritanic tyranny of the Commonwealth period, settled in Virginia and South Carolina. When the French Protestants came, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, they were not really foreigners in America. They possessed the same faith, they were guided by exactly the same system of morals, they were the same class of people basically, as those among whom they settled. One of the most liberal and democratic groups to organize a colony were the English Catholics of Maryland. The secret of understanding the beginnings of America is to know that there was room for everybody and for everybody's beliefs. Even the bigot in Europe eventually became the liberal here. The indentured servant, of whom there were comparatively few, eventually found freedom and acquired property in the wilderness. It was this abundant opportunity to possess free land which finally led to the complete triumph of our democracy. The real America has always been country America. The settlers came from Europe ready in mind and heart for the great adventure. The effort required independence, self-reliance and high courage. The weaklings failed and died. With every movement into the wilderness these mightier qualities of body, mind, and soul were renewed and developed. So our American democracy came, at last, to its greatest triumph west of the Alleghenies. Here the limitations upon opportunity which obtained in the coastal colonies were not to be found. Here was, at last, rich soil in abundance for any hand that could wield the axe or hold the plow. Under the leadership of men like Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln there was finally builded a great nation upon the broad foundation of universal white male suffrage. Here came, with the nineteenth century, the realization of the democratic visions of twenty-five hundred years. Here our American vanguard of democracy, at last, placed the banner of its hope and its triumph upon the topmost pinnacle.