Source: The nation and the Constitution. An oration delivered before the city authorities and citizens of Providence, July 4, 1866

THE
PROBLEM OF AMERICAN DESTINY

AN ORATION

DELIVERED AT A
CELEBRATION OF THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA, AT OWATONNA,
JULY 4TH, 1868.

BY
CAPT. HENRY A. CASTLE,
OF ST. PAUL.

GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC
Department of Minnesota

ROSTER

Grand Commander — H. G. Hicks, Minneapolis
Senior V. G. C. — Wm. T. Collins, St. Cloud
Junior V. G. C. — A. B. Webber, Owatonna
Assistant Adjutant General — O. L. Dudley, Minneapolis
Assistant Quartermaster General — J. C. Hamilton, Owatonna
Surgeon — J. B. McGaughey, Winona
Chaplain — F. A. Conwell, Minneapolis

Council of Administration

• Frank E. Daggett, Wabasha
• G. W. Shuman, Minneapolis
• Frank J. Mead, Farmington
• J. A. McDougall, Wabasha
• Wm. Lochren, St. Anthony

THE PROBLEM OF AMERICAN DESTINY.

On this proud and happy day, when from one verge to the other of our re-united Republic the old flag is waving over throngs of joyous people, celebrating its return with processions and cannon firing and holiday festivities, we, too, are met to mingle our loyal benedictions with theirs, and swell, with them, our choral songs of gratitude. We are assembled at the railroad centre of this vigorous young commonwealth, canopled by the steel-blue skies and enveloped by the electric air of Minnesota—fringed round with her waving grain fields, mirrored in her crystal lakes, and lulled by her singing cascades.

We are assembled at the call of an organization representing the Soldiers of Minnesota. This organization, designed to perpetuate the friendships and memories of the camp, and to care for the enfeebled and unfortunate, the widow and the fatherless, has invited the citizens of the State to join with them to-day, that their sympathies may be enlarged and their hopes strengthened by intercourse and mutual congratulations. It is well that it has been ordered thus. It is well that we who fought, and you who sustained us, should, now that the victory is won, meet for celebration upon terms of equality as citizens, and upon a platform of no conditions, except supreme devotion to our country.

It is a time for glowing enthusiasm, but also for serious meditation. It is a day on which our boastings concerning the past achievements and present position of our country should be tempered with an anxious regard for that future which is all in our hands. And since the enforced limits of the occasion forbid extended discussion, let us, leaving our luminous past to the high station in which history has embalmed it—leaving our splendid present, visible and audible all around us, to speak for itself—turn our eyes, with a keen and impartial scrutiny, upon our uncertain future. Let us, in other words, closely examine the circumstances and conditions which have combined to shape that luminous past and this splendid present, to discover, if possible, whether those circumstances and conditions are still in operation, and whether their combinations will still continue to work out similar results. And in this examination is involved the solution, so far as our feeble power can solve it, of the great Problem of American Destiny.

This is a problem in which every citizen of our favored land, as well as the sorrowing millions of oppressed all over the world, have a vital concern. But to you, comrades of the Grand Army, who suffered much and periled all for your country’s safety, yet counted those perils and sufferings nothing if by them could be secured the blessings of freedom to yourselves and your remotest posterity—to you, perhaps, is given a…

more potent realization of the deep importance of the question whether the American Nation is destined to be permanent, or whether we may expect gradual degeneracy and ultimate extinction.

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN RACE.

Since the fate of empires depends mainly upon the character of the people, and since all the aspects of our own nation are peculiarly interwoven and identified with the new Anglo-American race which has founded it, we shall first trace out the origin and predominant characteristics of that race.

We shall not find it difficult to trace back our ancestry, through the great families of man, to the earliest ages of which we have any authentic record; and we will ever find that, like the titular estates and honors of monarchical lands, we have descended, as it were, through the elder brother of each succeeding generation. We possess the best of old Noah’s blood, many times refined. The Anglo-American race is derived, as all are aware, from the Anglo-Saxon. The Anglo-Saxon took its origin from the Celts. The Celts were descended from the Scythians, who were the children of Gomer, the first-born of the sons of Japhet.

Japhet, the third of Noah’s sons, settled in Europe, and his family, in every age, has shown its superiority to the other two. It is said that “the whole earth is the sepulchre of illustrious men, and all time is the millennium of their story.” If so, the world is doubly ours, and the ages to come are to ring with the praises of our family name. Have the Athenians and Romans, the Italians and Spaniards, the French and Germans and English, successively amazed each other and the remainder of the world by their immortal works of genius, and by their enterprise which has given them successively undisputed sway over the entire family of man? We are the inheritors of their blood. We are the sons and daughters of Japhet. The great names in history are those of our own kindred.

Is there anything of grandeur to be found in the triumphs of Philosophy, from Thales and Pythagoras to him of our own land who wove his garland of fame from the storm-cloud’s rich but fearful rosary? Is there anything of devotion to be found in those heroic sacrifices to truth which have reddened the fields of the Old World with martyr blood?

tion of the Puritans from Great Britain, we find the causes which led to the separation such as to rally the true nobility of the land. Our Pilgrim Fathers were the heroes of that age—the heroes of principle, of energy, and of enterprise. From this heroic hundred, stepping out from England’s millions, have descended the men who have moulded the destinies of our nation.

Every incident of our subsequent history has contributed to intensify the best type of these inherited characteristics. The terrible ordeal of the civil war, so lately closed, has been beneficial in mobilizing the powers of the nation and disciplining its individual defenders, and by stimulating our patriotism and our reliance on higher principles and a higher Power, has generated a new and nobler humanity. While this fighting generation lasts, at least, no foreign foe nor domestic traitor will ever dare to defy the flag we have sworn to cherish.

Thus, from the earliest ages, our extraction has been from the best races of earth. The genius and the vigor of each generation, strengthened by the infusion of the best blood of all its contemporaries, and purged by the expulsion of the weaker elements of its own, has bequeathed to its successor all the wealth of its accumulated powers. Asia, Europe, and America are the three grand stages of humanity in its march through the ages. Asia is the cradle, where man passed his infancy under the authority of law, and where he learned veneration for a Divine Maker. Europe is the school where his youth was trained, where he increased in knowledge and strength, grew to manhood, and learned his own power. America is, and is to be, the theatre of his manly activity, where he brings into use all the forces he has acquired, and where he is destined to develop fully and finally all the glorious possibilities of the race.

Such is a condensed history of our descent “through a long line of illustrious ancestry.” Its effect upon our present condition and future prospects can be properly estimated only in connection with other circumstances operating to the same end, which we will now proceed to consider.

THE PHYSICAL CHARACTER OF THE COUNTRY.

“The Western Continent,” says Professor Guyot, “is founded upon a plan widely different from the Eastern. It is characterized by simplicity and unity, and by its vast extent, its fruitful plains, its numberless rivers, the prodigious facility of communication, nowhere impeded by serious obstacles, and its oceanic position, is eminently fitted to be a most magnificent theatre for the consummation of human history.” Combining a soil of incomparable fertility with a climate most delightful and salubrious—free alike from the profitless luxuriance, the poisonous exhalations and the venomous animals of the tropics, and the dreary, eternal winter of the frozen zone—Providence would seem to have reserved it for the heritage of its chosen people.

Descending to the minutia of physical phenomena, we will find that winds and tides, oceanic currents and atmospheric changes, her geological structure and geographical features, her lakes, rivers and cataracts, her mountain passes and her prairie ridges, her metals and minerals, her animals and vegetables, her forest—

wastes and fertile vales—all unite to render our own America an enlarged and beautiful Eden, where man is destined to end his earthly career as he began it, surrounded by all the circumstances necessary to secure the highest type of human perfection.

This land is the home of our race, reserved for it in virgin freshness and purity since the foundation of the world. We have gone in and possessed it by virtue of our superiority over its original inhabitants, and it is too late now to question the validity of our title. The whole continent is the homestead of our race, which, as we shall show, is, in spite of the infusion of many foreign elements, becoming yearly more homogeneous and indivisible. It was no dream of blind imagination, but a burst of inspired prophecy, which breathed the thrilling utterance:

“I see the living tide roll on,
It crowns with fairy bowers
The icy capes of Labrador,
The Spaniard’s land of flowers.
It streams beyond the splintered ridge
That parts the Northern showers,
From eastern rock to sunset wave
The Continent is ours.”

THE PHYSICAL CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

The Anglo-American race, since its occupation of the Western continent, has been much improved by intermixture with the best races of men. Marriage within certain limits of consanguinity was strictly prohibited in the Divine law, and nature, by the innumerable physical woes inflicted upon its transgressors, shows her approval of it. With us there has been every incentive and every opportunity for wide choice in the formation of matrimonial connections. America has been the goal of the adventurous and the daring, the patriotic and the noble, from all other lands. These have mingled and intermingled so intimately with our own people, that there is scarcely a domestic circle which does not represent several of the “great powers” of modern times.

And this infusion of fresh vigor, combining with the healthful character of the pursuits of a large majority of our people, and their freedom from fashionable restraints and fashionable vices, will continue to neutralize the baneful effects of vice and folly so alarmingly prevalent in our centers of wealth and population. Luxury will slough off annually its thousands of useless devotees, but industry will raise up annually its tens of thousands of sturdy men and women to swell the advancing throng.

THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

The foregoing considerations prepare us to expect a full measure of intellectual strength and activity in this new race. It would be as absurd to suppose that a great mind could dwell in the effete organism of a Chinese Mandarin as that even an ordinary one could remain undeveloped amid the raging animal spirits of an old Pict or Scot. What a basis there has been laid for the highest development of American intellectuality! The rarest, choicest minds the world has known have appeared in the family of Japhet, and its history shows that intellectual development is progressive. The glory of Egypt was eclipsed by the Periclean age of Greece. Greece was surpassed by the Augustan period of Rome. Rome—

was surpassed by the Italians under Leo X. The Italians were thrown into the shade by the Columbian era of Spain. Spain was excelled by France in the days of Louis XIV. Then France went down, and from Klopstock to Goethe, Germany had her day in the world of mind. England, which succeeded to the supremacy, cannot hold it long, for young America stands ready to seize whatever becomes the property of the Anglo-Saxon name.

While the master minds will thus push farther and higher the intellectual triumphs of the past, the common mind is being lifted, and mental development is becoming universal. Learning’s halls are open to all. Our swiftly revolving presses groan with the issue of their teeming volumes, and our capacious mails are burdened with newspapers and periodicals.

THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE

As a nation we have always been one of the most moral and religious on the globe. The sentiments of a pure morality, founded upon the doctrine of the golden rule, are highly respected among us. Our Sabbaths are better observed, and all crimes are less frequent and more justly punished than elsewhere. Reverence for and faith in an overruling Providence has ever been a national characteristic. We all believe that God has presided over the colonization and progress of this country. Such a sentiment is a tremendous power. It is a source at once of high resolve, vigorous will, and heroic effort. And we believe, as Christians, that God, who delights in acts of goodness to His faithful children, will perceive and acknowledge this deep national feeling of gratitude and faith.

The principle of religious freedom and tolerance, wisely adopted by the founders of our government, is one of the greatest elements of strength. Under its benign influence systems of good flourish, while systems of error, which have been cemented by ages of persecution abroad, are melting and falling away. Even the isolated Israelite is losing his identity. Do any fear from the influence of gigantic organizations of religious superstition—as, for example, they hold the Roman Catholic Church to be—they see that church losing its power over the children of its fold of the second or third generation born in America, and unable to secure a native-born priesthood. Thus, being obliged to shape its hoary tactics to the demands of a new and liberalized era, while its power for good is immeasurably increased, it is utterly shorn of its power for harm.

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS OF THE PEOPLE

The grand problems of social elevation which are being so successfully worked out in this Western world are mighty motive powers in the wheel of progress. Nearly all prominent men in letters, science, statesmanship, and the church are striving in some way to help the unfortunate. Great national charities are organized, and to assist them authors write, statesmen plan, good men pray, and all true men labor. New moral elements are daily added, and all the great social reforms not only give the poor more to eat, more comfortable dwellings, more recreation, and more books to read, but they make them purer and better. The best men of our age are seeking out the cause of disease, indigence, and depravity, that they may devise means for their cure or prevention. They are achieving—

great results, and their success is encouraging others to enter the same field, so that the force is constantly increasing.

The rapid recognition of the real position and rights of American women is a marked and important indication of advancement. New legal rights are being guaranteed to them. Measures are taken for their systematic education in those branches which shall fit them to fulfill their high mission as the mothers of a noble race. Political rights they may have for the asking, and political power they now control, in a pure and proper sense, more thoroughly than they ever did before.

Our theories of government are now being established on broad, liberal, and permanent bases. The terrible nightmare of human slavery, from which we have just awakened, sectionalized our patriotism and made our boasted freedom a hideous inconsistency. That has been swept away in the fiery whirlwind of revolution; but instead of sweeping with it, as we feared it might, the whole fabric with which it had been so cunningly interwoven, it left that fabric stronger and better than before. The interlacing cords of common blood, interest, and destiny, to the exclusion of any system of recognized aristocracy, unite the hearts of the whole brotherhood and bind them more closely together than any shackles of iron or steel that could be forged by the arm of the most cruel despotism.

The social and political questions involved in the relations of the freed people are being harmoniously and philanthropically decided. Universal education is opening up to them higher spheres of profitable employment. Impartial suffrage is welding them into the body politic, rewarding their loyal attachment to us during our hours of peril, and guaranteeing a continuance of it amid all future contingencies. The proud Anglo-Saxons, whose traditions of prowess and heritage of supremacy we have traced, fear no danger from the elevation of their benighted bondsmen, but regard it rather as a part of their sublime mission for the general enlightenment of the world. Do some of the complaining ones fear that the negro, in revenge for his own past wrongs, may attempt to enslave his former owner? They may read in the Constitution of the United States the grand injunction, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within all these borders.” Do some even of the less timorous fear that in States where negroes are in the majority they will at least disfranchise the whites? They may read in the constitutions of all the States where this could be attempted the declaration, “No man shall be disfranchised on account of race or color.” The wise ordinances proclaimed for the protection of the one race are equally applicable to the other; and both, under them, may march on, without fear or jealousy, in harmonious concert of labor and usefulness.

THE PRACTICAL ELEMENT OF THE AMERICAN CHARACTER

The disposition to spend no time in vain or useless theorizing, but the desire to reduce every new theory to practical, beneficial operation, gives great impetus to the genius of American progress. The wisdom and experience of all past ages, the vast powers of the remarkable inventive faculties of the Anglo-American race, its industry and energy, all turned to a practical account, bearing directly upon our advancement, are producing, and will continue to produce, astonishing results. Our mountains are bowing their imperial heads, and our valleys are rising to their summits.

mits. Iron coach-ways are spanning the continent and interlacing with each other in a network of channels of communication. Broad areas are annually conquered from the wilderness and added to the domain of civilization. The map of our country, received fresh and accurate from the publisher at the beginning of one year, must be rolled up, old and useless, before the end of the next. Ranging through all the fields of science, master spirits are plucking here and there a flower—not that they may weave them into garlands to adorn the brow of beauty, but that they may transplant them into congenial soil, where the flower will develop into a fruitage of substantial benefit to man.

The chimeras of the olden philosophy are abandoned for the practical possibilities of the new dispensation. The old alchemists sought a method of turning baser metals into gold. They failed, as it was in the order of Providence that they should fail, since their success would have diminished instead of increased the wealth of the world. For if gold were made so abundant it would no longer answer the purposes of money, and for actual use it is less valuable than iron. Modern science does not expend its efforts in these directions. It adds to the wealth of the world by increasing man's capacity of production, and adds to the length of life by multiplying the means of happiness.

We, to whom the incredible marvels of the past are accomplished and familiar facts, are liable to doubts as to the continued triumphs of human intelligence. We say with the youthful Alexander, “The universality of our fathers’ conquests leave little for us to achieve.” Indeed! When did the Almighty Power that formed the mind set limits to its expansion? The victories of Philip of Macedon, extensive as they were, were more than eclipsed by those of the once despairing Alexander. The apparent impossibilities of yesterday are the probabilities of today, the realities of tomorrow. And although it would seem that the limits of progress had been reached in some directions, yet bold and ardent minds are fond of pushing their investigations onward and onward into the shadowy realms of the infinite, tearing away the misty veil that impedes human vision, and exploring among the unfathomable mysteries beyond. They follow the reflection of a star, trembling upon the bosom of a lake and melting away in its depths, until they find it a flashing diamond among the pebbles on its bed. They see yet higher, brighter triumphs in the career of electricity, photography, and the thousand other new discoveries. And through the glimmering mist of futurity they see faint, undefined, but swelling embryos of other yet undreamed-of wonders, rapidly unfolding and destined in the fullness of time to burst forth upon the world, to invigorate, elevate, and illumine with their full-orbed splendor.

THE GENERAL PROSPERITY OF THE MASSES

With us, labor has been the parent of prosperity. With us, God’s soil and sunshine have been converted into charming homes, flourishing farms, and productive capital. The laws of nature have not been violated, nor the purity of society outraged in the acquisition of our wealth. All classes have grown rich together; but the ratio of comparative benefit has been largely in favor of the poorer. Steady employment, high wages, rapid increase in the value of landed property, and remunerative prices for the products of agriculture and skilled labor, together with the abun—

dance of raw material, have richly remunerated the toil of the working people of all avocations. Hence, the tendency of American prosperity is, on the whole, to the increase of substantial comforts to the poorer, rather than of baneful luxuries to the richer classes. A prosperity so universal and beneficial, so well merited and well appreciated, must inevitably tend to the general advancement of the race.

One of the results of this abundant prosperity is the universal dissemination of educational advantages to all the people. The rapid progress and mighty results of our noble free-school system are too often referred to, and too constantly present before us, to demand extended consideration. To them is to be attributed, in a constantly increasing measure, not only the moral and mental but also the material prosperity of the people.

There is darkness and desolation in one fair section of our land today, wrought upon the people by their own unutterable wickedness and stupendous folly. But that wickedness is atoned for; that folly has been terribly punished. Let us unite with them now to build up the waste places, that the orange and the magnolia again may bloom, and the cypress again may wave round the walls of happy homes. Over redan and bastion and lunette, over ditch and parapet and rifle-pit, worn down or filled up by the elements and smoothed over by time, a carpet of green will be woven, and roses will sweetly unfold. So let time smooth over the roughness of our righteous resentment, and so soon as we can safely—though not a moment sooner—let us restore the erring ones to their forfeited heritages, that all may work together as brothers, nearer than before, for the common prosperity of all.

Thus we have briefly sketched a few of the innumerable phases and aspects in our present condition bearing on our future prospects. It is a fruitful theme, and one upon which we love to linger. But these are all we can present now. They all combine, we think, to produce an answer to the question with which we started—“Is our nation permanent in its character, and destined ultimately to become the greatest on the earth?”—and that answer is fully and triumphantly in the affirmative. Let us now allude to some of the means by which this consummation is to be reached.

MEANS OF ADVANCEMENT

The Gospel of Christ is to be the great reforming agent. All the agitations in politics and morals, all the tumults and convulsions since His advent, have been but “the moving of the spirit of God on the face of the waters,” previous to the issuing of the mandate, “Let there be Light!” The followers of Christ are being rapidly assimilated, heathen nations are being gathered in, and the blood-crimsoned banner of the Cross is waving over the ruins alike of false religions and pagan idolatries. Thus united, they have a wonderful power, reaching every corner of the globe. From the days of the Apostles until now, every region which has received their evangel has speedily risen to the highest civilization.

Meanwhile, subservient to this, all other elements will be at work.

The science of government will be perfected, so that men will live harmoniously, and thus wars and strifes will cease. The mysteries of nature will be revealed, and men will learn to avail themselves of her great fundamental laws and apply them to their own necessities, so that suffering and poverty will be unknown. By the progress of inventions labor will be lightened, so that all will find time for mental and moral cultivation. With the removal of poverty, temptations to crime will be diminished, and by moral improvement the propensity to commit crime will be destroyed.

As wealth and education become universal, they will cease to be distinctions. No kind of honest labor will be degrading, for when all men are equal no trade can claim superiority. As man learns his physical structure, he will be able to avoid all deleterious practices, thus preserving his health and increasing his longevity. He will find the much-dreaded excess of population impossible, for as mental development goes on, a diminution of fertility will, by a well-established law of nature, be the result.

Here, then, is reached a state of virtue, peace, intelligence, health, ease and happiness. This is the millennium, brought about by no convulsions or upheavings, but in the fullness of Divine wisdom and power, by the harmonious co-ordination of a thousand incongruous events, originating in the establishment of the world, identified with all the phases of its history, and laboring steadily, throughout the lapse of ages, for the accomplishment of the one great end.

CONCLUSION

This is the solution of the great “Problem of American Destiny,” and it points to a glory-crowned period in the future of favored America. And we may disclaim all selfish pride in this contemplation, for the world is to grow better with us. America is to be but the centre from which are radiated those heaven-born beams which will make the whole earth bud and blossom as the rose, and make man worthy to again inhabit that beauteous home which angel hands prepared for him in the sweet fields of Eden.

This is our manifest destiny. But we must not lie down languidly to await its fulfillment. If we allow love of ease and luxury, or a blind reliance on the decrees of fate to possess us, we will but add another to the long array of nations on whose fallen domes and crumbling pillars Time has set the seal of “departed greatness.” But let us gird ourselves up for the fight and strike giant blows at the enemies before us. The agents of Satan are always laboring to mar the plans of the Beneficent. So cowardly conservatism and cruel treason always have, and always will, array themselves against the progress of holy Truth.

We must watch and fight them still, for on our own eternal vigilance will our lease of Liberty depend. Let us unite today in a solemn vow, “As firm as the mountains, as deep as the sea, and as pure as the heavens above us,” that we will…

work on and fight on until the end, and bequeath the battle to our rising posterity. Then:

“Weep not for the past, for a dawn is awaking
More pregnant with truth than the marble of old,
Kings tremble at Liberty’s cry, and now shaking,
Thrones vanish from sight like a gossamer scroll.
Upon the bright forehead of earth there are burning
Great words. They are words which the nations shall know;
They speak in the thunder, while empires are turning
The ashes of tyrants who ruled long ago.”

You may call these predictions the wild dreams of an enthusiast, but if they be dreams, God grant that I may never awake to see them dispelled. Let me dream on! Let me still retain the vision of a bright and glorious future for my beloved country. Let me dream that the black clouds which so lately obscured the golden sun of liberty will soon all be swept away, and that the anthems of deliverance from the millions just freed from slavery’s chains may mount up, with our own enraptured chorus of gratitude and joy, uninterrupted to the great Throne of the Eternal King. Let me dream that the dark clouds are to be swept away, the thick gloom dispelled, and that we, walking in the illumination of that bright orb, brightened and purified, may march on, with shouts and songs of triumph, to the accomplishment of our high-written destiny.