The American Commonwealth. Viscount James Bryce

of Independence.1781Formation of the Confederation.1783Independence of United States recognized.1787Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia.1788The Constitution ratified by nine states.1789Beginning of the federal government.1793Invention of the cotton gin.1803Purchase of Louisiana from France.1812–14War with England.1812–15Disappearance of the Federalist Party.1819Purchase of Florida from Spain.1819Steamers begin to cross the Atlantic.1820The Missouri Compromise.1828–32Formation of the Whig Party.1830First passenger railway opened.1840National nominating conventions regularly established.1844First electric telegraph in operation.1845Admission of Texas to the Union.1846–48Mexican War and cession of California.1852–56Fall of the Whig Party.1854–56Formation of the Republican Party.1857Dred Scott decision delivered.1861–65War of Secession.1869First transcontinental railway completed.1877Final withdrawal of Federal troops from the South.1879Specie payments resumed.1898War with Spain: annexation of Hawaii.1899Cession by Spain of Puerto Rico and the Philippine Islands.1904Acquisition of the Canal Zone at the Isthmus of Panama.

Area, Population, and Date of Admission of the States

      The thirteen original states, in the order in which they ratified the Constitution

	Foreign Policy and Territorial Extension
	Ratified the Constitution	Area in square miles	Population (1910)
Delaware	1787	2,050	202,322
Pennsylvania	1787	45,215	7,665,111
New Jersey	1787	7,815	2,537,167
Georgia	1788	59,475	2,609,121
Connecticut	1788	4,990	1,114,756
Massachusetts	1788	8,315	3,366,416
Maryland	1788	12,210	1,295,346
South Carolina	1788	30,570	1,515,400
New Hampshire	1788	9,305	430,572
Virginia	1788	42,450	2,061,612
New York	1788	49,170	9,113,614
North Carolina	1789	52,250	2,206,287
Rhode Island	1790	1,250	542,610
States subsequently admitted, in the order of their admission
Vermont	1791	9,565	355,956
Kentucky	1792	40,400	2,289,905
Tennessee	1796	42,050	2,184,789
Ohio	1802	41,060	4,767,121
Louisiana	1812	48,720	1,656,388
Indiana	1816	36,350	2,700,876
Mississippi	1817	46,810	1,797,114
Illinois	1818	56,650	5,638,591
Alabama	1819	52,250	2,138,093
Maine	1820	33,040	742,371
Missouri	1821	69,415	3,293,335
Arkansas	1836	53,850	1,574,449
Michigan	1837	58,915	2,810,173
Florida	1845	58,680	752,619
Texas	1845	265,780	3,896,514
Iowa	1846	56,025	2,224,771
Wisconsin	1848	56,040	2,333,860
California	1850	158,360	2,377,549
Minnesota	1858	83,365	2,075,708
Oregon	1859	96,030	672,765
Kansas	1861	82,080	1,690,949
W. Virginia	1863	24,780	1,221,119
Nevada	1864	110,700	81,875
Nebraska	1867	77,510	1,192,214
Colorado	1876	103,925	799,024
N. Dakota	1889	70,795	577,056
S. Dakota	1889	77,650	583,888
Montana	1889	146,080	376,053
Washington	1889	69,180	1,141,990
Wyoming	1890	97,890	145,965
Idaho	1890	84,800	325,954
Utah	1895–96	84,970	373,351
Oklahoma	1907	70,057	1,657,155
Arizona	1911	113,020	204,354
New Mexico	1911	122,580	327,301

      Territories, Etc.

	Area	Population (1910)
Hawaiian Islands	6,449	191,909
Alaska	590,884	64,356
District of Columbia	70	331,069
Philippine Islands ^1	127,853	7,635,426
Porto Rico	3,435	1,118,012

CHAPTER 1

       Introductory

      What do you think of our institutions?” is the question addressed to the European traveller in the United States by every chance acquaintance. The traveller finds the question natural, for if he be an observant man his own mind is full of these institutions. But he asks himself why it should be in America only that he is so interrogated. In England one does not inquire from foreigners, nor even from Americans, their views on the English laws and government; nor does the Englishman on the Continent find Frenchmen or Germans or Italians anxious to have his judgment on their politics. Presently the reason of the difference appears. The institutions of the United States are deemed by inhabitants and admitted by strangers to be a matter of more general interest than those of the not less famous nations of the Old World. They are, or are supposed to be, institutions of a new type. They form, or are supposed to form, a symmetrical whole, capable of being studied and judged all together more profitably than the less perfectly harmonized institutions of older countries. They represent an experiment in the rule of the multitude, tried on a scale unprecedentedly vast, and the results of which everyone is concerned to watch. And yet they are something more than an experiment, for they are believed to disclose and display the type of institutions towards which, as by a law of fate, the rest of civilized mankind are forced to move, some with swifter, others with slower, but all with unresting feet.

      When our traveller returns home he is again interrogated by the more intelligently curious of his friends. But what now strikes him is the inaptness of their questions. Thoughtful Europeans have begun to realize, whether with satisfaction or regret, the enormous and daily increasing influence of the United States, and the splendour of the part reserved for them in the development of civilization. But such men, unless they have themselves crossed the Atlantic, have seldom either exact or correct ideas regarding the phenomena of the New World. The social and political experiments of America constantly cited in Europe both as patterns and as warnings are hardly ever cited with due knowledge of the facts, much less with comprehension of what they teach; and where premises are misunderstood inferences must be unsound.

      It is such a feeling as this, a sense of the immense curiosity of Europe regarding the social and political life of America, and of the incomparable significance of American experience, that has led and will lead so many travellers to record their impressions of the Land of the Future. Yet the very abundance of descriptions in existence seems to require the author of another to justify himself for adding it to the list.

      I might plead that America changes so fast that every few years a new