American battle victory at Saratoga,
A.D. 1777.
Saratoga
"Westward the course of empire takes its way;
The firstfour acts already past,
A fifth shall close the drama with the day,
Time's noblest offspring is its
last."
Bishop Berkeley.
Or the four great powers that now principally role the political destinies of the world, France and
England are the only two whose influence can be dated back beyond the last century and a half.
The third great power, Russia, was a feeble mass of barbarism before the epoch of Peter the Great and
the very existence of the fourth great power, as an independent nation, commenced within the memory of living men.
By the fourth great power of the world I mean the mighty commonwealth of the Western Continent, which
now commands the admiration of mankind. That homage is sometimes reluctantly given, and is sometimes accompanied with suspicion and ill will. But
none can refuse it.
The Battle of Saratoga was an outstanding American victory. Saratoga is a name which will long be remembered. Saratoga, where gallantry and
valor was the norm.
The honor and the compassion of the American forces after the
battle of Saratoga was shown in this account:
"The British sick and wounded who had fallen into the
hands of the Americans after the battle of Saratoga on the seventh were treated with exemplary humanity; and when the Convention was executed,
General Gates showed a noble delicacy of feeling, which deserves the highest degree of honor."
All the physical essentials for national strength are undeniably to be found in the geographical
position and amplitude of territory which the United States possess; and their almost inexhaustible tracts of fertile but hitherto untouched
soil, in their stately forests, in their mountain chains and their rivers, their beds of coal, and stores of metallic wealth, in their extensive
sea-board along the waters of two oceans, and in their already numerous and rapidly-increasing population.
And when we examine the character of this population, no one can look on the fearless energy, the
sturdy determination, the aptitude for local self-government, the versatile alacrity, and the unresting spirit of enterprise which characterize
the Anglo-Americans, without feeling that here he beholds the true elements of progressive might.
Three quarters of a century have not yet passed (in 1851) since the United States' ceased to be mere
dependencies of England. And even if we date their origin from the period when the first permanent European settlements out of which they grew,
were made on the western coast of the North Atlantic, the increase of their strength is unparalleled either
in rapidity, or extent.
The ancient Roman boasted, with reason, of the growth of Home from humble beginnings to the greatest
magnitude, which the world had then ever witnessed. But the citizen of the United States is still more justly entitled to claim this
praise.
In two centuries and a half his country has acquired ampler dominion than the Roman gained in ten. And
even if we credit the legend of the band of shepherds and outlaws with which Romulus is said to have colonized the Seven Hills, we find not there
so small a germ of future greatness as we find in the group of a hundred and five ill-chosen and disunited emigrants who founded Jamestown in
1607, or in the scanty band of Pilgrim Fathers who, a few years later, moored their bark on the wild and rock-bound coast of the wilderness that
was to become New England.
Saratoga
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