To our forefathers the process was novel, and, in some of its features, repugnant.

Many of them could not divest themselves of the feeling that the old States ought to receive more consideration than the new; whereas nowadays it would never occur to anyone that Pennsylvania and Georgia ought to stand either above or below California and Montana.
It is an inestimable boon to all four States to be in the Union, but this is because the citizens of all of them are on a common footing.

If the new commonwealths in the Rocky Mountains and on the Pacific slope were not cordially accepted by the original Thirteen States as having exactly the same rights and privileges of every kind, it would be better for them to stand alone.

As a matter of fact, we have become so accustomed to the idea of the equality of the different States, that it never enters our heads to conceive of the possibility of its being otherwise.

The feeling in its favor is so genuine and universal that we are not even conscious that it exists.