329 TO 335 PEARL STREET.
1856.
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, by
HARPER AND BROTHERS,
In the Clerk's Office for the Southern District of New York.
TO CITIZENS
WHO TRUST IN PROVIDENCE,
MEN WHO ARE TRUE TO HUMANITY,
AND PATRIOTS
ALWAYS HOPEFUL OF THE REPUBLIC,
THIS WORK
IS FRATERNALLY INSCRIBED.
INTRODUCTION.
By a natural movement, in not one of its great elements has civilization gone eastward an inch since authentic history began. To demonstrate this simple and comprehensive fact is the motive of the following work, and all the great leading events of time are the means employed. Berkeley has suggested a grand outline in his significant stanza, but neither he nor any other author has hitherto attempted to define the acts, and portray the connected scenes, which constitute the one great drama of human progress.
Artistic beauty, martial force, scientific invention, and universal amelioration, have thus far illustrated the great progressional law of successive predominance, and these, we believe, will ultimately be consummated in the supreme sway of perfect civilization. We are led to this view by taking a catholic survey of every nation that has risen above the historical horizon; in which course we observe that all are alike the subjects of Providence, each in its time and place being furnished with a part to act, and a destiny to fulfill. Considered in this light, it may be reverently said that human history is a sacred drama, of which God is the poet, each transitional age an act, humanity the hero, and the discriminating annalist a prophetical interpreter.
But this work is not so much the defense of a theory as it is the display of facts, and the deduction of a general principle consequent thereupon. The travels of men, and the trade-currents of God, move spontaneously and perpetually toward the West. The opposite direction is always "down East," while all healthful expansion and improvement is "out West." The great eastern turnpike, canal, or railway, was never built, nor has a great eastern ship yet been launched on the deep. If the unnatural name has of late been given to a colossal craft, the misnomer is indicated by the fact, that her first trip is appointed to be a western one, and to terminate in our most eastern harbor, where the most stupendous development of western commerce just begins. All great enterprises by land and by sea have ever commenced in the East, and augmented both their efficiency and worth through a continuous unfolding toward the setting sun. The latest race is evermore the best, the last half of each great age is most prolific in progressive elements, and the west end of every great town throughout Europe and America is the growing end.