might be; but as yet we were not one nation. 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. Part of this had the second time been
declared free, by _state_ law also. To the eastward of this lay
certain states where slavery had been forbidden by the laws of the
several states, though not by that of the nation. Again, far out
to the West, beyond the great waterway on one of whose arms our
travelers now stood, lay the vast provinces bought from Napoleon;
and of these, all lying north of that compromise line of thirty-six
degrees, thirty minutes, agreed upon in 1820, had been declared for
ever free by _national_ law. Yet beyond this, in the extreme
northwest, lay Oregon, fought through as free soil by virtue of the
old Northwest Ordinance, the sleeping dog of slavery being evaded
and left to lie when the question of Oregon came up. Along the
Pacific, and south of Oregon, lay the new empire of California,
bitterly contended over by both sections, but by her own
self-elected _state_ law declared for ever free soil. Minnesota
and the Dakotas were still unorganized, so there the sleeping dog