Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). New York. 1906.
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| to the other, it is in the end better that they should separate, great though the evils of separation be. It is of incalculable advantage to Oregon and Texas, no less than to New York and Virginia, to be members of the mighty Federal Union; but this is because the citizens of all four States stand on precisely the same footing. If Texas and Oregon were not given the full rights of the original thirteen commonwealths, freely and without the least reserve, it would be better for them to stand alone. But in reality we have become so accustomed to the new system that we do not conceive of the possibility of any failure to grant such rights. The feeling of equality among the different commonwealths is genuine and universal. The difference in their ages never occurs to any one as furnishing a ground for a feeling of superiority or the reverse; it does not enter at all into the jealousies between the different States or sections. The fact that the new communities are offshoots of the old is never taken into account in any way whatever. This feeling now seems to us part of the order of Nature; and its very universality is apt to blind us to the immense importance of the struggle by which it was firmly established as a principle. Until the Revolution, it may almost be said to have had no recognized existence at all. |
| In every colony outside of New England and Virginia there was a large Tory party; and |