Here came the ancestors
of Abraham Lincoln, among the axemen from the South, and here the
ancestors of General Grant, among the builders of towns, from New England,
both born in cabins. And these instances are but suggestive of the
conglomerate that was to be as practicable for building purposes (the co-
efficient of spirit being once determined) as any homogeneous, age-old
rock used in the structure of nations. It became "homogeneous" not as
bricks or stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete,
eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be
moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion
of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not
fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of
the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a new
rock has been formed.
How distinctly western this first migration was you may know from the fact
that there was frequent talk of secession from the Union by the seaboard
commonwealths in the early post-revolutionary days.
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