OCEANA.
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CHAPTER XX.
The American Union.—The Civil War and the Results of it.—Effect of the Union on the American Character. — San Francisco.—Palace Hotel.—The Market.— The Clubs.—Aspect of the City.—Californian Temperament.—The,Pacific Railway.—Alternative Routes.—Start for New York.—Sacramento Valley.— The Sierra Nevada.—Indian Territory.—Salt Lake.—The Mormons.—The Rocky Mountains.—Canon of the Rio Grande.—The Prairies.—Chicago.— New York and its Wonders.—The “Etruria.”—Fastest Passage on Record.— Liverpool.
The problem of how to combine a number of self-governed communities into a single commonwealth, which now lies before Englishmen who desire to see a federation of the empire, has been solved, and solved completely, in the American Union. The bond which, at the Declaration of Independence, was looser than that which now connects Australia and England, became strengthened by time and custom. The attempt to break it was successfully resisted by the sword, and the American republic is, and is to continue, so far as reasonable foresight can anticipate, one and henceforth indissoluble.
Each state is free to manage its own private affairs, to legislate for itself, subject to the fundamental laws of the Union; and to administer its own internal government, with this reservation only—that separation is not to be thought of. The right to separate was settled once for all by a civil war which startled the world by its magnitude, but which, terrible though it might be, was not disproportioned to the greatness of the issues which were involved. Had the South succeeded in winning independence, the cloth once rent would have been rent again. There would not have been one America, but many Americas. The New World would have trodden over again in the tracks of the old. There would have been rival communities, with rival constitutions, democracies passing into military despotisms, standing armies, intrigues and quarrels, and wars on wars. The completeness with which the issue has been accepted shows that the Americans understood the