It is
the very difficulties over which the croakers shake their heads that
make the experiment interesting, momentous. The United States is a
veritable microcosm: it presents in little all the elements which go to
make up a world, and which have hitherto kept the world, almost
unintermittently, in a state of battle and bloodshed. There are wide
differences of climate and of geographical conditions in the United
States, with the resulting conflict of material interest between
different regions of the country. There are differences of race and even
of language to be overcome, extremes of wealth and poverty to be dealt
with. As though to make sure that no factor in the problem of
civilisation should be omitted, the men of last century were at pains to
saddle their descendants with the burden of the negro--a race incapable
of assimilation and yet tenacious of life. In brief, a thousand
difficulties and temptations to dissension beset the giant Republic: in
so far as it overcomes them, and carries on its development by peaceful
methods, it presents a unique and invaluable object-lesson to the world.
The idea of unity, annealed in the furnace of the Civil War, has as yet
been stronger than all the forces of disintegration; and there is no
reason to doubt that it will continue to be so.
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