It ruined many political fortunes and made yet other fortunes.

That year was a threshold-time in our history, nor did any see what lay beyond the door.
If there existed then a day when great men and great measures were to be born, certainly there lay ready a stage fit for any mighty drama--indeed, commanding it.

It was a young world withal, indeed a world not even yet explored, far less exploited, so far as were concerned those vast questions which, in its dumb and blind way, humanity both sides of the sea then was beginning to take up.
America scarce more than a half century ago was for the most part a land of query, rather than of hope.
Not even in their query were the newer lands of our country then alike.

We lay in a vast chance-medley, and never had any country greater need for care and caution in its councils.

By the grace of the immortal gods we had had given into our hands an enormous area of the earth's richest inheritance, to have and to hold, if that might be; but as yet we were not one nation.