WARS and BATTLES
From Ancient Greece - to modern day.

If Oregon be excluded from the estimate, there will still remain within the limits of Texas, New Mexico, and California, 851,598 square miles, or 545,012,720 acres, being an addition equal to more than one third of all the territory owned by the United States before their acquisition, and, including Oregon, nearly as great an extent of territory as the whole of Europe, Russia only excepted. The Mississippi, so lately the frontier of our country, is now only its center.

With the addition of the late acquisitions, the United States are now estimated to be nearly as large as the whole of Europe. The extent of the sea-coast of Texas on the Gulf of Mexico is upward of 400 miles; of the coast of Upper California, on the Pacific, of 970 miles; and of Oregon, including the Straits of Fuci, of 650 miles; making the whole extent of sea-coast on the Pacific 1620 miles, and the whole extent on both the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico, 2,020 miles.

The length of the coast on the Atlantic, from the northern limits of the United States, round the Capes of Florida to the Sabine on the eastern boundary of Texas, is estimated to be 3,100 miles, so that the addition of sea-coast, including Oregon, is very nearly two-thirds as great as all we possessed before; and, excluding Oregon, is an addition of 1870 miles, being nearly equal to one half of the extent of coast which we possessed before these acquisitions.

We have now three great maritime fronts—on the Atlantic, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific, making, in the whole, an extent of sea-coast exceeding 5,000 miles. This is the extent of the seacoast of the United States, not including bays, sounds, and small irregularities of the main shore and of the sea islands. If these be included, the length of the shore-line of coast, as estimated by the superintendent of the Coast Survey in his report, would be 33,063 miles."

                                The importance of the power of the United States being then firmly planted along the Pacific applies not only to the New World, but also to the Old. Opposite to San Francisco, on the coast of that ocean, lie the wealthy but decrepit empires of China and Japan. Numerous groups of islets stud the larger part of the intervening sea, and form convenient stepping-stones for the progress of commerce or ambition. The intercourse of traffic between these ancient Asiatic monarchies and the young Anglo-American republic must be rapid and extensive.

Any attempt of the Chinese or Japanese rulers to check it will only accelerate an armed collision. The American will either buy or force his way. Between such populations as that of China and Japan on the one side, and that of the United States on the other—the former haughty, formal, and insolent; the latter bold, intrusive, and unscrupulous—causes of quarrel must sooner or later arise.

The results of such a quarrel cannot be doubted. America will scarcely imitate the forbearance shown by England at the end of our late war with the Celestial Empire; and the conquests of China and Japan, by the fleets and armies of the United States, are events which many now living are likely to witness.

Compared with the magnitude of such changes in the dominion of the Old World, the certain ascendancy of the Anglo-Americans over Central and, Southern America seems a matter of secondary importance. Well may we repeat De Tocqueville’s words, that the growing power of this commonwealth is "un fait entierement nouveau dans le monde, et dont 1'imagination elle-memene saurait saisir la portee."

An Englishman may look, and ought to look, on the growing grandeur of the Americans with no small degree of generous sympathy and satisfaction. They, like ourselves, are members of the great Anglo-Saxon nation, "whose race and language are now overrunning the world from one end of it to the other." And whatever differences of form of government may exist between us and them—whatever reminiscences of "the days when, though brethren, we strove together, may rankle in the minds of us, foe defeated party, we should cherish the bonds of common nationality that still exist between us.

We should remember, as the Athenians remembered of the Spartans at a season of jealousy and temptation, that our race is one, being of the same blood, speaking the same language, having an essential resemblance in our institutions and usages, and worshipping in the temples of the same God and this may and should be borne in mind.

And yet an Englishman can hardly watch the progress of America without that regretful thought that America once was English, and that, but for the folly of our rulers, she might be English still.

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