Fair St. Louis, the future Capital of the United States, and of the Civilization There is the East, and there is India.-BEnton. ST. LOUIS : PUBLISHED AND FOR SALE BY J. F. TORREY, BOOK AND NEWS DEALER. JKIGOG Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, BY L. U. REAVIS, In the Clerk's Office of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. ISSOURI DEMOCRAT PRINT. کیشن کی رو vi give good reasons in favor of the change, try to deceive any American citizen by false reasonings, nor selfishly advocate the preference of any one locality for that great national purpose to the prejudice of any other place, but contend for that which I believe to be just and honorable in all relations to the Republic and her people. In the preparation of these pages I do not claim by any means that I have exhausted the subject, but I have done the best I could with the material facts at my command. For my statistics I have consulted Government authorities and drawn freely from their pages. Especially am I indebted to the last Report (1867) of the Hon. Jos. S. Wilson, Commissioner of the General Land Office. This Report is no doubt the best that has ever come from that office. While I claim correctness for my general statement of facts, I leave the reader to determine upon the weight of the argument and the merit of the subject under consideration. Born and reared in the Valley of the Mississippi, and in a country and Government in extent and kind unequaled in the history of mankind, and sharing a little of that human nature which is keenly and instinctively alive to every step toward individual and national greatness, I cannot be otherwise than in favor of every change which our national progress demands. I am therefore committed to this work of removing the seat of government from the cradle of our national infancy to the Mississippi Valley, the destined home of our national greatness While writing my pamphlet entitled The New Republic, I became fully satisfied that the special work of transferring the seat of empire from its present place to the Mississippi Valley would soon engage the attention of the greater portion of the American people, for the advanced column of civilization across the continent would demand the change as a fulfillment of the Prophetic Voices about America.'' THE WEST. "Let her not be despised! American Orientals may dream that wisdom has taken up her perpetual abode on the shores of the Atlantic, and that the genii of Art, of Science, of Literature, have planted their rosy grottoes on the sunny side of the Alleghanies; but a thousand fancies never made one fact. Like the swaddled Hercules, the West has already put out her infant arms and strangled two political dragons that were coiling about her cradle; and as soon as she walks forth in the consciousness of matured strength she will make a greater fluttering among the harpies that prey upon her interests than did the club of the hero among the Stymphalian vultures. Ill-founded contempt is a blow that always rebounds. The Assyrians contemned the Persians while the Persians like muskrats were undermining the walls of Babylon. Haughty, learned, philosophic Greece, the conquerer of Xerxes, became a Turkish slave, and vii the fair daughters of Themistocles and Leonidas were bought and sold in the shambles of Smyrna. Rome despised the barbarians, and the barbarians conquered Rome. Cæsar overrun Gaul with victorious legions, and now Gaul holds a standing army in the city of the Cæsars. England would force America to drink Bohea, and America poured out for England a cup of gunpowder tea, the taste of which she has not yet got out of her mouth. Thus it is, Arms and Arts in their onward progress have always pitched their tents nearer the setting sun; and the conquests of the one and the triumphs of the other have left their fruits to ripen and decay on the track. The very relies of the ancient empires are now to be dug out of the soil. Civilization, like the ostrich in its flight, throws sand upon everything behind her; and before many cycles shall have completed their rounds sentimental pilgrims from the humming cities of the Pacific coast will be seen where Boston, Philadelphia, and New York now stand, viewing in moonlight contemplation, with the melancholy owl, traces of the Athens, the Carthage, and the Babel of the Western hemisphere.'-Horace Greeley. THE GREAT FIELD OF THE WEST. "As the center of population and power is to be in the Mississippi Valley in the future, so must we look thither for the New Man who is to be the redeemer of our race and character. The Western man already shows larger, broader, and healthier development, spiritually speaking, than his brother of the East. He has never been cramped as yet by any of the restraining forms of social ecclesiasticism; his mind, like his eye, ranges over large extents, and is not content to sit down with itself after having acquired a little power over its fellows. "As the Great West is bound to supply laws and men for the vast future of this continental country, so will 'it furnish the religion whose allembracing forms are to invite the entire people into the simple secrets of its worship."—Banner of Light, Boston. THE MEN OF THE WEST. "One who has not visited the West knows little or nothing of the spirit of Western men. There is an all-pervading zeal, energy, ambition, push, go-ahead, seen nowhere else. The blood of a Western man courses more rapidly in his veins than in the Eastern man or in the European, and he thinks, talks, and acts on a larger scale. The Western farmer wastes more in a year than the Eastern farmer saves. He may lack refinement, but he has a generous heart for his friends and a deal of pluck for his enemies. His religion is less sectarian, less bigoted, and more broad, catholic, and truly christian.'-American Phrenological Journal, New York. |