The President's Vision for the Republic
Franklin Pierce delivers an annual message outlining trade, territory, and the state of the American Union in 1853.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In the ongoing organization of our government, the sole reliance of the confederacy, and the only security for honest and permanent satisfaction to its interests, lies in the justice and intelligence of the people. While the different branches of the government are, to a certain extent, independent of each other, the duties of all have direct reference to the source of power. Fortunately, under this system, no man is so high, and none so humble, as to escape the obligations which all function implies. The United States has continued gradually and steadily to expand, through acquisition of territory, which are now universally seen and admitted to have been wise in policy and just in character. The thirteen states have grown to be thirty-one, with relations reaching to Europe on the one side, and to the distant realms of Asia on the other.
“The thirteen States have grown to be thirty-one, with relations reaching to Europe on the one side, and on the other to the distant realms of Asia.”
This address, reprinted in Olympia's territorial paper, reflects the 19th-century preoccupation with federal expansion and 'Manifest Destiny.' The rhetoric of the republic as a 'complex and symmetrical' system echoes in the persistent tension between federal authority and state rights that defines American political discourse today.
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