Identifier: oldnorthwestbegi00hins (find matches)
Title: The Old Northwest; the beginnings of our colonial system
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Hinsdale, Burke Aaron, 1837-1900. (from old catalog)
Subjects:
Publisher: Boston, New York (etc.) Silver, Burdett and company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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domain, described by Mr. Gladstone as anatural base for the greatest continuous empire ever estab-lished by man. The man curious about what might have been cannothelp speculating on the course of history provided any one ofthe limitation-schemes proposed at Paris had prevailed. Ashe reflects on the facts of geography, on the strength and au-dacity of American civilization, on the weakness of SpanishAmerica and of Spain herself, and on the feeble Canadiansettlements in 1783, he may conclude that the eastern half ofthe Mississippi Valley and the Atlantic Plain would havebeen reunited even if once separated ; that the idea of separa-tion, supported in some form by the three powers, was againstNature; that Spain, in particular, lost her only opportunityto control the Father of Waters in the sixteenth and seven-teenth centuries, and that the great valley of the West wasthe predestined field of Anglo-Saxon institutions and life.There is undeniable force in this reasoning; perhaps it is al-
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THE NORTHWEST WRESTED FROM ENGLAND. 18/ together conclusive. At the same time, the proposed limita-tion might have turned American events into wholly differ-ent channels. What if the Confederacy had fallen to pieces ?What if the Constitution of 1787 had never been framed orratified ? What if the United States had become dependentupon one of the European powers ? In any one of theseevents, the world would never have seen that magnificentgrowth which has absorbed territories four times as great asthat bounded by the treaty of 1783, and which furnishes themain argument for the conclusion, It would have made lit-tle difference. The longer one considers the subject, the lesswill he be disposed to think that the delivery of the West bythe trustee appointed in 1763 was a foregone conclusion ; themore will he think the retention of the Northwest by GreatBritain would have been a much more serious mischance thanthe gaining of the Southwest by Spain; and the more reasonwill he discover for cong

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