No nation, taken as a whole, can ever see so far into the future; no nation, even if it could see such a future, would ever sacrifice so much to win it.

Hitherto each race in turn has expanded only because the interests of a certain number of individuals of many succeeding generations have made them active and vigorous agents in the work of expansion.
This Indifference as Marked in New as in Old Communities.
This indifference on the part of individuals to the growth of the race is often nearly as marked in new as in old communities, although the very existence of these new communities depends upon that growth.

It is strange to see now the new settlers in the new land tend to turn their faces, not towards the world before them, but towards the world they have left behind.

Many of them, perhaps most, wish rather to take parts in the struggles of the old civilized powers, than to do their share in laying the obscure but gigantic foundations of the empires of the future.

The New Englander who was not personally interested in the lands beyond the Alleghanies often felt indifferent or hostile to the growth of the trans-montane America; and in their turn these over-mountain men, these Kentuckians and Tennesseans, were concerned to obtain a port at the mouth of the Mississippi rather than the right to move westward to the Pacific.