National Character | Page 7

sea and swarms in every port. Our people are
intelligent, and virtuous, and happy beyond all example. Our
government is strong and efficient. What is needed to make our destiny
glorious, but just to go on in the way that we have come?
Then see the prospect which invites us on. Vast territories are still
unoccupied. What shall prevent the flood of population from pouring
westward and overflowing these territories? Our internal resources
have only begun to be developed. What shall prevent their utmost and
magnificent development? The commerce of the Pacific waits to be
ours. How long till Pacific railroads shall bind our eastern and western
coasts together, and our country, standing in the midst of the earth and
reaching out its arms on either hand, clasp the entire sphere in its
embrace? Our country is in the dew of its rejoicing youth, and has but
the dimmest consciousness and dream of its own strength, and who can
predict the glory of its manhood, when in the fullest self-consciousness,
it shall exert to the utmost its matured and mighty energies?
Thus are we accustomed to talk. Our destiny is manifest--our glory is
inevitable. It is pleasant to talk thus, and it is unpleasant to talk
otherwise. Yet we ought to desire to see and know the truth.
Self-flattery is an odious folly. Is our destiny, then, manifest? Is our
glory inevitable? Has God so conspicuously favored us that he cannot
but continue to bless? Ah! It is our self-flattery and odious folly to

think so.
We need not look again to our history or our prospects, to gather
evidences of a different destiny, although such evidences might not be
wanting. Yes, we might find the evidences which, duly weighed, would
make us shudder in view of our possible or probable future. We might
come to think it very problematical whether our country has sufficient
vital force to work into good American citizens the hordes of infidels,
paupers, criminals, cast upon our shores from the nations of the old
world;--whether our country has sufficient wisdom to guide its own
vexed domestic questions to a proper and satisfactory issue, and to
balance and regulate the rival and numberless interests of a country
widening indefinitely in extent;--whether--but no, we do not need thus
to forecast the future to ascertain our probable destiny. We may
determine the question by the teaching of God's word. "Blessed is the
nation whose God is the Lord." And blessed is that nation alone. Here
is the solution of the question of our destiny. It is in making the Lord
the God of our country, that we are safe--that we are prosperous--that
our glorious destiny becomes inevitable. Our destiny is left to ourselves.
The means of its glory are placed in our hands. We may use them or
not, as we will.
And now, I utter it to you, my hearers and fellow-citizens, as the
solemn testimony of the Lord our God, that so surely as ignorance and
moral corruption and lust of power, become generally prevalent, and
popery and infidelity attain the supremacy among us, it matters not at
all that we have had a ballot-box, and a free press, and free schools, and
the whole circle of liberal institutions,--these will become but the
insignia of our shame; it matters not that we have had a boundless
territory, and a teeming soil, and mighty cities, and universal
commerce,--the grass will grow again on our prairies,--the red man
return to his forsaken forests,--our cities become black with desolation,
and the sails of our commerce be rent on the seas, or the hulks of our
commerce rot at our wharves; it matters not that God has been
wonderfully gracious to us as a nation,--the more wonderful the grace,
the deeper the insult and crime of our despising it, and the deeper our
doom;--this, this is our manifest destiny.

And it is only as America teaches her children to fear God and do their
duty; it is only as our virtuous citizenship escape from the chains of
corrupt party and procure for themselves a fair representation in the
offices of government--exerting themselves for the purification of
corrupt men, rather than for the promotion of their evil designs; it is, in
a word, only as the power of our blessed religion shall go out from the
hearts of the truly pious in our land, leavening the mass of the
population and bringing them under its sway;--it is only as we truly
make the Lord our country's God, that we can hope to be blessed, and
can, with any just confidence, await our country's future glory.
Need I, my hearers, deduce and enforce the exhortations of this subject?
Or do they not lie upon its surface, and do they not make their own
appeal