We had no united thought, no common belief as to what was national wisdom.

For three quarters of a century this country had grown; for half a century it had been divided, one section fighting against another in all but arms.

We spoke of America even then as a land of the free, but it was not free; nor on the other hand was it wholly slave.

Never in the history of the world has there been so great a land, nor one of so diverse systems of government.
Before these travelers, for instance, who paused here at the head of the Ohio River, there lay the ancient dividing line between the South and the North.

To the northwest, between the Great Lakes and the Ohio, swept a vast land which, since the days of the old Northwest Ordinance of 1787, had by _national_ enactment been decreed for ever free.