"All forms of religion have united for the first time to diffuse charity and piety, because for the first time in the history nations, all have been totally untrammeled and absolutely free."
Martin Van Buren, 8th President, 1837-1841-from Van Buren's second State of the Union Address, December 3, 1838-The address is largely congratulatory. "...The Constitution devised by our forefathers as the framework and bond of that system, then untried, has become a settled form of government; not only preserving and protecting the great principles upon which it was rounded, but wonderfully promoting individual happiness and private interests...It was reserved for the American Union to test the advantages of a government entirely dependent on the continual exercise of the popular will, and our experience has shown that it is as beneficent in practice as it is just in theory...the right of suffrage, has increased the direct influence of the mass of the community, given greater freedom to individual exertion, and restricted more and more the powers of Government; yet the intelligence, prudence, and patriotism of the people have kept pace with this augmented responsibility. In no country has education been so widely diffused. Domestic peace has nowhere so largely reigned... All forms of religion have united for the first time to diffuse charity and piety, because for the first time in the history of nations all have been totally untrammeled and absolutely free. The deepest recesses of the wilderness have been penetrated; yet instead of the rudeness in the social condition consequent upon such adventures elsewhere, numerous communities have sprung up..." Despite the tone, the young United States still faced border conflicts with Great Britain on the Canadian border, with Russia in the Pacific Northwest, and Mexico in the Southwest. Internally, there existed a large banking crisis and a massive forced migration of Native Americans from the Southeast to west of the Mississippi River.
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